Resident Evil 0, The Insecurity of Evil
by Foulds
Summary: It's not a good day for Evil... When Rebecca, a follower of Resiphysics, and Billy, a normal bloke, are thrown together, can they survive? James Marcus will really wish he hadn't got out of bed today... Chapter 14 is now up! Please Read and Review!
1. Here puppy puppy

Disclaimer; I have no legal control over Resident Evil and all affiliated names and trademarks. I promise I don't. If I did, then I guarantee that Code Veronica wouldn't have had such a stupid opening. Honestly, how the hell are we supposed to believe that Umbrella would honestly stand 12 guards in front of barrels labelled 'warning, highly explosive, do not shoot when guards are standing nearby'? Muppets…

Raccoon City. A city with little of interest in it anymore. A city that is a smoking hole in the ground. The last two statements are closely interconnected. To fully understand the tragedy, we must look at the events that preceded the mansion incident. Perhaps at the moment when Jill Valentine was born and then dropped on her head. Several times. Or maybe the moment when Jill astounded her parents at age 2 when her first words turned out to be,

"Is it… bwood?"

Sadly, we need not look back that far. Perhaps we should remember the moment when Rebecca learned how to play the piano impeccably at a single glance of the sheet of music. Maybe the moment when little Wesker released his first bio weapon (an unusually large spider) upon the test subjects within the girls changing room and laughed evilly yet emotionlessly while noting down the combat data for future use and planning a synchronised larger scale strike against girls around the country. Maybe the moment when little Nemesis fired a missile from a weapon three times his length at the TV upon first seeing Budgie the Little Helicopter. Sadly, we need not look back that far either. In fact, all Whig historians can go home now. We must, however, look back 24 hours before the mansion incident. The fate of Bravo Team. 

A helicopter circled over Raccoon forest. Mysterious murders had been reported throughout Raccoon City. People were being eaten. Action had to be taken, and immediately. Therefore, for obvious reasons, a crack team of police had been deployed in a helicopter. Flying over the forest outside of Raccoon City. For no well explained reason. At night. Aboard the helicopter was Rebecca Chambers. A 17 year old medic on her first mission. She had admittedly been slightly worried by the prospect of helicopter travel, but her nerves had been settled by the team's highest leader, Albert Wesker, volunteering to personally complete the safety check of the helicopter. It had been even better news when she overheard him speaking on the phone, describing how he had added 'a little something extra' to the fuel that would 'give Bravo Team a big surprise, bwa, ha ha ha, HA HA HA HA!' Rebecca was certainly looking forwards to the look on Chris Redfield's face when it came out that Wesker's new fuel compound had saved the police department so much money on helicopter fuel. Rebecca had been mildly surprised to walk past Wesker's office earlier that day to hear him engaged in a monologue,

"Soon the helicopter will crash, then Alpha team will be led to the mansion, then all the combat data that we'll ever need will be gathered!" Rebecca had been shocked and appalled,

"Honestly," she muttered to herself, "why does someone always give away the ending? God…" although she had been curious as to how Neighbours' script writers were going to get all that stuff in.

Rebecca was jolted out of her little nap by a sudden shaking. The helicopter had caught fire. The pilot took down the crippled piece of machinery as best he could and everyone was fine. Enrico, the team's captain, checked that everyone was alright then addressed his men and woman,

"Listen up Bravo Team, we were sent to this forest to investigate murders in the suburbs of Raccoon City," he paused and looked confused for a moment, "unfortunately, Raccoon City's forty three miles north of here. So we're now investigating this place. Ok, first, I want… Rebecca, what is it?"

"Umm, given that we've just crashed, lost several million dollars worth of police equipment, it's night and we don't know where we are, why we're here or what we're supposed to be doing, shouldn't we try and contact the Raccoon Police Department first? Y'know, they might just like to know that we're ok, they could send a rescue mission after us and stuff. Also, shouldn't we wait until morning before we do anything? We'll just get lost now."

"Weren't you paying the slightest bit of attention at Wesker's briefing yesterday?" hissed Enrico, "You've just suggested we break every fundamental ground rule that Wesker made up yesterday! For goodness sake… anyway, as Wesker told us, in the event of a crash, wander through the forest yelling 'here, puppy, here puppy puppy' as this is the secret code that our undercover forest agents will use to recognise us. Ok, Richard, you go with Kenneth and Ed. I'll explore with Forest. Rebecca, because you're young, inexperienced and trained solely as a medic, you can explore on your own." Rebecca began to protest at this, "Look, I'm sorry, but it's quite clearly in the file Wesker gave me labelled 'for when your helicopter falls out of the sky'. You, Rebecca, as the young and inexperienced one with no real hope, but with a strong sense of honour and duty and the fair chance of being an unlikely heroine that will survive to the end, are to be immediately separated from the rest of the group and told to go explore the witch's cottage." Enrico looked around and turned back to his file, having put his reading glasses on to examine the small print, and continued reading, "In the unlikely event that a witch's cottage will not be available, Rebecca must be pushed towards the nearest contaminated location, ah, here we go, I have included a map of the local area which I expect you to crash in with suitable locations marked in red, all the best, Wesker." Enrico closed the file with a map, "And that, Rebecca, is why you are going exploring on your own. Now according to this map which Wesker has provided of where we've crashed, isn't that helpful of him, by the way, Rebecca, you are expected to go to the train tracks and then tie yourself to them. Shortly afterwards, a rescue team will come and untie you. The rest of us are heading this way; good luck Rebecca, and don't worry, I've got a good feeling about this mission. Ok, team, one final piece of advice, whatever happens, keep yelling 'here puppy, here puppy puppy' and the rescue team will find you… oh Rebecca stop whimpering, ok, fine, you can have this," said Enrico as he threw a radio to her, "It's a radio that can only receive messages and not send them. Isn't it great? Wesker's certainly taken care of everything. Oh, and take one of these as well," added Enrico as he passed her a gun, "it might prove useful."

"How do I make things die with it?" asked Rebecca earnestly

"Point and pull the trigger, no, that's upside-down, no, use you right hand for the trigger and hold a torch with your left hand, no, only one finger, you need your others to grip the handle, no, you can steady it with your other hand, no, that will kill you, not them, no, that's…" Enrico gave up. Rebecca had always mildly resented the fact that Wesker had forbade her from leaning to handle weapons 'just in case' and now she wondered if he had perhaps been planning something… no, of course not, she was just getting jumpy from all the darkness. Rebecca started walking down the darkest path as instructed by Enrico.


	2. The sea snake collective

Meanwhile, Enrico and his friends stumbled across an odd surprise. They found several military vehicles abandoned. Enrico was puzzled. What could they possibly be doing here? Where were those who brought it out here? Enrico opened the door of an armoured jeep and picked out a clipboard which he read aloud,

"Prison Transfer of Billy Coen for execution. Billy was found guilty by court martial of at least 23 murders." Enrico looked up and put down the clipboard, "How exactly did these vehicles get out here? It doesn't make any sense. Why would the military drive a prison transfer through a forest? What's wrong with flippin' roads?"

"Dramatic necessity, live with it" replied Forest

"Eew, the vehicles, they're all slimy." whined Ed

"Right, any other clues?" said Enrico

"Yep, there's no blood, so a firefight seems very unlikely" answered Forest

"And Billy's transport seems to have had the door. melted off it?" added Ed

"And there's icky giant leeches dripping acid everywhere" concluded Forest

"Right!" exclaimed Enrico, "I've got it! Clearly, Billy did all of this!"

"What?" said Ed, "How'd you work that out? How'd he melt the door?"

"Hmm, yes, Billy is a snake of some description, that's it"

"But there's no blood, it would take a lot of creatures to do that, like leeches"

"Hmm, yes, Billy is a collective of many tiny snakes"

"And the slime? The same slime that's on the leeches"

"Sea snakes"

"Why?"

"What?"

"Why would a sea snake collective do this?"

"It's highly aggressive"

"Sea snakes aren't aggressive, they hunt for food alone"

"Exactly, he's drunk all the blood and is still hungry, we must be careful"

"Umm, what about the leeches? Please reconsider their role."

"Yes, that is suspicious. hmm, right! Billy is in league with the leeches"

"What?"

"Why wouldn't they be? They're both slimy and gross. They must be allies"

"Right, yes sir, perhaps you'd like to inform Rebecca of the terrible news"

"Of course," said Enrico happily, "Rebecca, can you hear me?" he yelled into the radio, "Please be on the look out for an exceedingly hungry highly aggressive tiny sea snake collective in league with an independent alliance of giant icky leeches that answers to the name of Billy. Thank you Rebecca. Ok guys, lets move on, here puppy, here puppy puppy."


	3. The magic bullet

Meanwhile, Rebecca had found the train tracks, having managed to avoid the various spikes and camouflaged holes that Wesker seemed to have missed off the otherwise perfect map. Unfortunately, she found something not on the map. A train sat on the tracks. There were no lights on and it was eerily silent. Rebecca looked closer to find the Ecliptic Express written on the side, after she had wiped the blood stains off anyway,

"Hmmm," thought Rebecca, "This is slightly suspicious, almost. foreboding in some way. A train sitting in the middle of nowhere. A train with an almost. evil name. The gentle mutter from an unidentified source of. 'Brains'. Hmmm, what to do, what to do? Better go inside, yes, good idea." Rebecca opened the door. 

THE ROAD TO SAFETY HAS BEEN CLOSED. PLEASE FOLLOW DIVERSION SIGNS.

Rebecca came across an empty and proceeded through the door. The next room was also empty. Except for several corpses with mouldy looking skin. Rebecca was surprisingly unfazed by them. It's not like dead people have anything to do with her. As a medic and policewoman. A noise behind her made her turn around. One of the corpses had got up and was shambling towards her. Rebecca thought back to her basic training. Right, minorities were to be treated with respect, as their differences are what make society beautiful. Hmmm, yes, the undead were certainly a minority. Hopefully. She quickly got out her notebook and turned to the corpse slowly,

"Good evening sir, I'm a policewoman on an investigation, is everything ok?"

"Brains" replied the zombie

"Oh dear, what seems to be the problem?"

"Brains"

"Most unfortunate, are you absolutely certain that your brain has been stolen?"

"Brains"

"Of course, sir, now, do you have any idea who might stolen your brain?"

"Brains"

"Hmmm, yes, I always wondered how that bloody puppet was so smart"

"Brains"

"Yes, sir, I heard you, you do not need to repeat yourself"

"Brains"

"Sir, I'm trying to do my job, there's no need to be abusive"

"Brains"

"Do not take that tone with me, or you will be placed under arrest yourself" Rebecca turned round to notice that the ethnic minority of the undead was rapidly becoming less of a minority. Corpses were being converted to the new religion by the second. Rebecca did a quick head count. Hmmm, damn it, 6 corpses to 5 zombies. Rebecca knew that there were clear rules for dealing with minorities. But there were no rules for dealing with majorities. The remaining corpses seemed unfortunately content with their present ethnicity. Right, what would Wesker do in this situation? Rebecca remembered back to her first day at STARS. She had waited outside Wesker's office patiently to meet him. Another officer had very rudely pushed in front of her in the queue and burst in with his gun drawn,

"So, you've made it here. Well done. But you won't leave this office alive"

"Wesker, you're mad!" yelled the man, "You'll never get away with this"

"Oh, but I will, I'm already working for Umbrella and soon Bravo team will all be dead, especially Rebecca Chambers, and then Alpha Team will all die in the fire of my hatred!" Wesker then began to laugh very loudly, several shots then rang out and the officer was thrown through the door, bleeding horribly. Rebecca stepped through the shattered remains of the door,

"Hello, I'm Rebecca"

"Hi Rebecca, I'm Wesker. oh, sorry about him, he's always late for work. then he sat on a nail. then the draft pushed him through the door. then, oh never mind. Welcome to STARS." he had been such a nice man. Anyway, what had he said. fire of one's own hatred. Right, what was that. Rebecca didn't do fire of her own hatred. She did charcoal of her own neutrality. At best, she did wispy smoke of her own mild exasperation. Then again, now she had a gun. Right, how was she going to justify this massacre. hang on, she didn't need to, as Wesker had once helpfully informed her when she had walked in on him putting an entire clip into a corpse, walking was a capital offence. At least it was when they were walking in your way. Right, once again, Wesker logic was paying dividends. She raised her pistol. This was exciting. It was time to see the effect that top police firearms could have. She fired. The bullet passed straight through the zombie. Rebecca was dismayed. The zombie didn't seem to have noticed. It was all a bit anticlimactic really. Still, as Wesker always said - if at first you don't succeed, fill witnesses with lead so that they can't tell anybody else. It certainly worked for this situation. Rebecca raised the gun again. Two more shots had no effect, but, to her pleasant surprise, the fourth one knocked him to the floor. Rebecca was mildly puzzled. Why would an already dead person who had lost no blood and seemed to feel no pain drop after four bullets when the first three had had no effect? Rebecca looked around. Several of the zombies, having been clearly surprised by the show of force, had decided to feign being dead. Well, more dead. Several more had put their hands in the air and started whimpering 'brains' quietly. Rebecca knew that she was now obliged to place them under arrest quickly. She looked down at her gun and smiled. As Wesker had always said at STARS meetings, human right violations were acceptable in the name of experimentation. We walked right up to one of the zombies. She placed the gun against the head of a zombie of a clearly nervous disposition. She fired into his fleshy rotting skull three times. They was again no effect whatsoever. The zombie opened his eyes that had been screwed closed when the nasty loud noises started. He sighed 'brains' with clear relief. Rebecca smiled. She bent down and put the gun against the test subject's shoe. She fired once, the fourth bullet, into his shoe. The zombie made his final statement, which, to help the reader with a slow wit, was 'brains'. Just like the first victim of Rebecca's massacre, he fell to the increasingly infamous 'fourth bullet'. One of the zombies who had surrended looked from side to side. He resented the treatment of his comrade. Fortunately, he had a cunning plan. He was going to slowly shamble towards Rebecca in a straight line while muttering 'brains'. Genius, total genius. The zombie put his strategy into practice. Rebecca grinned insanely. It was time to teach these decaying bastards a lesson. She raised the pistol and opened fire. The zombie chuckled a cry of 'brains', mocking Rebecca for the pathetic lack of effect her puny weapon was having. 'Brains' he contentedly muttered to himself as the second bullet tore through him with no ill effects of note. The third bullet passed straight through his chest as the zombie nervously mumbled 'brains?' as the flaws of his master plan became increasingly evident to him. He turned round and began to shamble back towards the door. The fourth bullet passed through his arm and sent him back to the dead for good. Rebecca looked around challengingly,

"Anyone else feel like being a super villain? Anyone else want to stop being dead? Umm, that is, anyone else want to be not undead? Hmm, maybe. anyone else want to become undead thus leading to rekilling by me?" The zombies turned to each other in some confusion as to what to do next, several scratching their heads and several of these removing an ear in the process, but most decided not to defy her when the fatal fourth bullet was only three bullets away. Rebecca was satisfied as the zombies all lay back down and did an oddly unconvincing impression of being dead, often scratching themselves and yawning. She moved on to the next room. She walked over to the desk and was shocked at what she saw.


	4. It's all about the ink

Rebecca looked down onto the desk. She was shocked to see a piece of paper. Yes, Rebecca was truly shocked. Rebecca had passed by several items of non interactive background items, but now she had found this piece of paper. It glowed on the desk and shimmered in the darkness, almost as if trying to say 'read me, read me'. She picked up the paper as, in the train where the unholy abominations of the undead were fast multiplying, she felt she had the time to be reading pieces of paper at random. She also felt that no ethical issues were raised by sneaking into somebody's personal compartment and reading their diary. Obviously, police were allowed to do this freely. The paper was partially obscured with blood. It read, as far as Rebecca could see,

"Memo to the head of Umbrella recovery team 19, please proceed as planned to known contamination sites and wipe out the [unreadable] which have been created by the [unreadable] which itself was made by the evil [unreadable] corporation, who has hired us to sort out this mess. Please destroy this letter after receiving it as it gives no new information to you, yet acts as clear proof of the [unreadable] corporation's place in this evil plan. Whatever happens, do not leave it sitting on a desk where anyone who wanders into your unlocked cabin could read it. I will also, so that there is clear written evidence of their involvement in this illegal and highly secret evil plan, now leave you the names of the agents who have been placed in high up positions in Raccoon City but who are really working for the [unreadable] corporation and will betray their men to the [unreadable] corporation soon. The first, and most violent, of these turncoats is Albert Weske [the rest of the paper is covered by a clichéd blood stain]"

"Hmmm," thought Rebecca slowly, "this is one of those clues. But, what does it tell me?" Rebecca was most annoyed at whoever had bled so carefully onto this memo. Trying to get the blood off the memo interestingly never even entered her mind. One thing stuck with her. 'Albert Weske'. There was something familiar about that name. The letter was useless really and gave away no information, unless that blood wasn't there, in which case it would reveal the name of the evil corporation behind all this and the name of the traitor. Rebecca put the gore censored letter down and looked around the desk again. A typewriter lay on it. Rebecca didn't know why, but she felt an overwhelming urge to type her name and location, feeling no guilt that it wasn't her type writer. Anyway, it was just part of her ever growing collection of crimes, which now included vandalism, theft, breaking and entering and murder. However, for obvious reasons, there was no ink in the typewriter. She looked around again, something round glinted madly at her. She walked over to it and was surprised when her own pocket asked if whether she wished to pick it up, use it or mix it with something. She instructed her pocket to pick it up and, even though it was only going to be a matter of seconds until she actually chose to use the ink ribbon, the laws of physics demanded that she put it away in her pocket out of sight, walk over to the typewriter, open her brain's menu, select the ink ribbon and put it into the typewriter. Rebecca was ecstatic, now she was going to get the chance to write something with a typewriter. She wrote happily,

"Rebecca, 01, Train Cabin" Rebecca was so happy at this. She wanted to write more. She wanted to write her name again. And again. And again and again and again. Then she might write, um, well never mind, she could write her name again. She started to type again. She looked at the paper and gasped as nothing was there,

"Hey, where's my name?" yelled Rebecca.

"Look," replied the omniscient personification of the laws of the Resident Evil universe, "You found an ink ribbon. You wrote your name. Now the ink is used up and to write your name again, you must find more ink ribbons. It all makes perfect sense."

"No it bloody doesn't," replied Rebecca, "How the hell can anyone have ever considered making an ink ribbon only capable of fewer than 20 letters? What company would make an ink ribbon like that? And what bloody company would buy them?" 

Far away from our story, somewhere in Raccoon City, far away from Rebecca at the moment, sat a man in front of a typewriter. He had been found guilty of murder by the Raccoon Department of Justice and so had been sentenced to the ultimate penalty in Raccoon City. Death had been too good for him, so he had got this. He had been commissioned to write a novel. He sat at his desk, crying into his hands. It had been about 5 minutes since he got back into his flat. He turned to the typewriter and pressed his brain's 'A' button in its direction. The typewriter asked him if he wanted to use the typewriter. He clicked yes and began writing,

"Chapter 2, Steven turned" and then it was over. He was back in the flat. He got out another ink ribbon, fitted it into the typewriter and pressed the 'A' button again, "to Charlotte and decided" and again he was back in the room. He added another four words with the next ink ribbon and he was out of them. It was time to leave his flat again and try and find more ink ribbons. They tended to be hidden away and they were always in groups of three. Always in threes. Glinting away. Raccoon City's library was the abode of the damned, the forsaken and the criminally insane. Every book was the result of years of toil. Every page was soaked (metaphorically only, owing to health and safety issues) in sweet and blood. Books were written only by the brave, or perhaps the foolish. They were started in ignorant cocky haste and finished in insanity or not at all. If one were pick a book written in Raccoon City from the shelf, there was a fair chance that it would start confidently, a fifth of the way through the protagonist's love interest would die unfortunately, a third of the way through all the main characters would be killed horribly, half way through the book would descend into random bitter insults levelled at imaginary friends, two thirds of the way through the imaginary friends would become imaginary demons, four fifths of the way through the book would usually be 'BEHOLD THE EYE OF VECNA' written over and over in mirror writing and then the book would trail off as the writer was severely marginalised by death. Elsewhere in Raccoon City, at the ink ribbon factory to be precise, a little man laughed inhumanly as the profits continued to roll in thanks to the wonderful idea of cutting down on the amount of ink in each ribbon before heading out to hide them in groups of three.

Meanwhile, while the omniscient yet unfortunately not omnipresent narrator got exceedingly side-tracked, Rebecca had wandered through the train and was crouched down over a corpse. Crouched over a corpse. With not even a hint of worry or suspicion about the whole undead eating brains thing. She sat there staring at him, when a voice came from behind her,

"Hello, I'm Billy, can we be friends?" said a man, presumably called Billy

"Hello Billy" said Rebecca, turning round, "Oh" she added as she noted that a gun was pointed at her. Hmm, a man was pointing a gun at her, what to do, what to do? What would Wesker do in this situation? No, Rebecca didn't have a butcher's knife. This must be that damn sea snake collective Enrico had spoken of. Right, time to fight fire with fire,

"Sure Billy, I'd love a new friend. One thing, friends don't point guns at each other. How about you put your gun down?"

" Oh for goodness sake, I was being sarcastic"

"Lieutenant Billy Coen, I presume, former US army, dismissed in disgrace, having been accused of the murder of 23 people. And, more recently, you ate my friends, which I am slightly annoyed about"

"Some policewoman, I presume, here in order to, never mind, you're boring, I'm off, toodles"

"Hang on, you're a murderer and I'm a policewoman and I've got a gun. We've got a have a showdown"

"Why? Why should I bother? I'd just kill you anyway. It's much easier to just walk away. It's not like you're going to shoot me"

"I might, I've shot loads of those undead things"

"Oh, be quiet, I'm off"

"Look I've got a gun pointed at your back, and I'm putting you under arrest, now you can stop or I'll put a bullet through every organ you have in alphabetical order. And I'm a trained medic!"

"Look, if I stay here then I'm in a safe room in the company of a trained police officer away from any zombies, and if I wander off then I'm wandering straight into trouble with no help. What honestly sounds like the logical thing to do to you?"

"Oh shut up, anyway, what are you even doing on this train? You got released from the prison convoy some way away. For what possible reason would you, trying to escape to freedom, walk onto a train which, for all you knew, was full of witnesses. Also, when you found out that the train was full of dead people and monsters, why the hell would you stay on the train? Anywhere is safer than this"

"Y'know, that is all slightly illogical, isn't it? Well anyway, I'm already kind of under arrest and I'm not going to co-operate with you, so, what have you got planned for the rest of today?"

"Well, I've just shot my way through several civilians and have come across a mass murderer, so, given that I'm on a train full of monsters and I have no weapon except a pistol while, for example, Richard, my colleague, has a shotgun, I'm going to explore some more"

"I thought I was under arrest?"

"Shut up"

"Ah, what's the matter? Can't you arrest me? Go on, I dare you"

"You know, you could really get annoying" added Rebecca as she walked back towards the other side of the train with the key she had found on the corpse she was examining earlier


	5. Enter Dr Marcus

Rebecca reached the other end of the train. On the way, passing the coach of 'corpses', it became clear that several members of the undead had got together and carried out a brain storming session (no pun intended)on a nearby whiteboard, on which was a spider diagram with Rebecca written in the centre and the words 'shambling' and 'brains' surrounding her name. One of the undead was proudly smiling and clinging to his Nobel prize for undead strategy. Rebecca strolled past with a can't be bothered attitude that rather upset some of the undead, who had hoped for Rebecca creeping into the ambush alongside tense music. They sought to put their pre-planned tactics into action, but were dissuaded by Rebecca mentioning over her shoulder that there were three of them and each clip of her handgun contained fifteen bullets. A quick trip by the undead to the whiteboard came up with the relevant arithmetic and the lifely challenged settled down again. 

She walked through the door and glanced around the room. She walked forwards to the door ahead, which wouldn't open. She used her incredible powers of wiring to ascertain instantly that the kitchen doors (another fact she magically discovered by herself) would not open without power and so she would need to fix the circuits, which would, presumably, be hidden somewhere hard to reach, probably behind a giant angry turtle or something. She went back to the end of the room to go up the stairs to the dining room, and gasped as (dramatic music crescendo) Billy walked through. She turned to him,

"What are you doing here? Why are you following me?"

"It's a bloody train. It's effectively a long corridor. Given that the door to the driver's cabin at the other end of the train is locked, as you know, it was only a rather limited amount of time until I had to follow you down this single thin corridor with no other routes through the train. I didn't exactly want to follow you, it was just…"

"Shut up"

"Look, we should join up and fight evil together"

"Again, why exactly? Irrespective of whether you're innocent or not, I'm a police officer. If any of my colleagues find us together, you'll be executed and I'll be dismissed from the force. Also, you have no reason to help me, why not leave through the door I came in through? Then again, why the flip I'm exploring is beyond me. I think our mission was to look for cannibal murderers in this forest. Well, I may have found one. God this scenario makes almost no sense. Anyway, I think I've been doing a fair job by myself, thank you"

"Look, there's some weird stuff on this train…"

"You don't say"

"Fine little girl, you go on and do what you want by yourself"

"I will, and I'll be just fine" Rebecca said as she strolled up the stairs. She found herself in what used to be a dining room. It was now on fire. It was deserted except for one man on a table at the far end of the room. So, a man in an otherwise empty burning room on a train full of undead monstrosities. Rebecca, her natural intelligence shining through, walked casually over to the man and tapped him on the shoulder. The man's head looked up and turned round to Rebecca, before continuing to turn, slipping onto his shoulders and then falling to the floor,

"Uh-oh, uh-oh, damn damn damn, ahh, what should I do?" Rebecca thought in a panic, "Umm… put it back! Put it back!" Rebecca quickly grabbed the head and put it back loosely in the man's shoulders. She muttered 'sorry' to the man and looked around. Luckily Billy wasn't there. Rebecca just knew that if he saw her decapitate an innocent he'd tease her for ages. Unfortunately, the corpse took a turn for the worse as it began to melt into a pile of leeches that swarmed onto Rebecca. She stumbled backwards and began to futilely attempt to brush the leeches off. Billy picked this opportune moment to run in to save her. Rebecca, although being a combination of eaten and melted, turned calmly to him,

"Well, if it isn't Mr Go-and-get-yourself-killed. You go and act so cool and unconcerned, but you really care, don't you, go on, say it, don't you?"

"No, I just would prefer you not to die over horribly… dying"

"If you really don't care, then just go"

"Look do you want saving or not?"

"Excuse me? Save me? You don't need to 'save' me. I just need some help. In fact, I don't even need that. I'm a twenty-first century woman and I can deal with a plague of leeches myself because I don't need no man" yelled Rebecca while sitting down and clicking her fingers a lot

"Oh be quiet" sighed Billy as he decided to save Rebecca anyway. He drew his own pistol and opened fire on the leeches

"Oh, great plan" said Rebecca sarcastically through a mouth full of leech, "really safe, really, and logical. I'm being attacked by several hundred leeches and your plan is to shoot them off? Doesn't that seem rather dangerous to you? Anyway, you're going to shoot them off one by one? I don't have that much skin, and you don't have that many bullets" Billy decided not to bother answering. He then smiled smugly as he was proved right as the leeches began to slowly slither away. Suddenly, lightning lit up the hill which the train was stopped next to. Rebecca and Billy looked out to see a man in a white… dressing gown thing. The man was singing and summoning the leeches to him with his song. He turned to the two protagonists and spoke,

"Fools! You dare meddle in my affairs? I will crush you!"

"Oh, I am so scared" replied Rebecca

"As you should be" added the man

"Umm, sarcasm…?" said Rebecca

"Hey, you should so be scared, I'm the ultimate bad guy, the final boss"

"You? You are the ultimate evil in this game? But you're pathetic. I mean, for goodness sake, the giant crocodile in Resident Evil 2 is so much scarier than you, you're just weird" said Rebecca

"Now hang on, I'm flippin' terrifying" said the man, interrupting Rebecca

"No, no you're not. Ok, who do you think would win a fight between you and Nemesis? How about you and a G-type? Plant 42 could so take you" answered Rebecca, not bothering to reveal how she could so clearly see the future at this moment in time

"Fine, they look more scary, but I look scary as well. I've got a mysterious understated evil intentions. And I've got really evil eyes. I'm damn terrifying"

"Look," said Billy calmly, "I'm sorry if everyone's been too polite to mention this before at… wherever ultimate evil hangs out but you look like a homosexual castrated opera singer and you appear to be wearing a dress"

"It's not a dress!"

"What is it then?" asked Rebecca mockingly

"That's not the point, the point is that I'm wearing something unusual that sets me apart from all other evil. And I'm wearing something really thin in the rain, proving how fearless I am"

"All that proves is that you didn't see the weather forecast for this evening and that you forgot to bring an umbrella" pointed out Rebecca helpfully

"Look, you can see how powerful I am. Me and my leeches were the ones to destroy the train and kill all the people aboard it, now that's scary"

"Well done" said Rebecca, "You killed unarmed civilians. Billy and I could have done just as good a job"

"Yes, well… I've got really unique powers. How many bad guys are made out of leeches and can control leeches at will?"

"Um, how many bad guys would want to be?" pointed out Billy, "Being constructed out of leeches really isn't that useful? A stack of molluscs isn't that scary, but it is a lot weaker to salt. Also, controlling leeches? Really not scary"

"Not scary? I'll show you! Go, my leech army! Go!" Leeches began to move towards the train. Five minutes later, Rebecca shouted up to the man,

"Umm, are they nearly here yet? We're getting bored"

"They're leeches" sighed Billy, "They're pretty slow. This could take a fair amount of time. Look, just call off the 'attack' now and we can save a lot of time"

"Umm," mumbled the man. He turned to his leeches which were attempting to circumnavigate a fallen tree with an improved ramp made of more leeches, "Can you guys hurry it up please, this is very embarrassing for the forces of evil"

"Look," replied one of the leeches angrily, "if you want us to get this done faster then come and help us. For goodness sake, we're leeches, we don't have limbs, never mind opposable thumbs, how are we supposed to hurry up?"

"You're super leeches, you have lots of muscle and stuff"

"We're still just leeches, slithering is really slow and awkward"

"Umm, if I could just interrupt," said Billy, "I really wouldn't bother. They are just leeches and we have guns and sturdy boots. I'm confident we'd win"

"Fine," grumbled the man, "I admit that today hasn't gone as well as I had hoped it would. But I'll be back. Remember my name well, fools, for it will be your doom, I am Dr James Marcus!"

"A doctor?" said Rebecca, "Ohhh, terrifying in principle. And James Marcus, well, watch out Nemesis, here comes a terrifyingly named villain"

"Oh that's it," sniffed James Marcus, no longer able to keep a brave face, "you are so mean, oh just go away" Dr Marcus then snapped his fingers and the train began moving forwards…


	6. Architects and Ice Picks

As the train began to pick up speed through the forest and James Marcus' pathetic whimpering became fainter, Rebecca and Billy remembered their present predicament. The dining room doors were closed until the power was restored. Rebecca strolled to the end of the carriage and saw a hatch in the wall that led to a ladder up to the roof. A small glowing document nearby helpfully informed her that the circuit breakers were up on the roof. Rebecca turned to Billy,

"Who the hell designed this train? Will, of all places would you put the circuit breakers where nobody can possibly access them? What were the staff supposed to do if something blew a fuse? Either climb onto the roof or stop the train? Why wouldn't you just put them somewhere more accessible? Would they just stroll through the dining, climb up to the roof, stroll along the top, change a fuse, stroll back, swing back into the dining room and head back to see if the dining room doors were open. The entire layout of this train makes no sense?"

Little did Rebecca know the truth. Far away from where she was, at the very summit of a tall castle surrounded by swirling clouds, a man sat and grinned insanely. He was seated at his excessively large organ in a room composed largely of dark and filthy stained glass windows. This was another of the unique (to use a very positive euphemism) individuals that made Raccoon City so unique. This man was The Architect. He was responsible for designing every building in Raccoon City, and he was presently talking on his mobile,

"Right, so how are the new trains? Circuit breakers on the roof? No toilets? Accessing the roof of most carriages requires a spring loaded grappling hook, the name of which Nintendo are going to sue us over? Good!"

Through a combination of pure coincidence and dramatic necessity, The Architect picked this exact moment to leap up and run to his drawing board, dribbling excessively while he did it. He turned to a part of the room no less empty than the rest of it and yelled,

"Right, I've decided, I'm going to design a library! Right, central hall with two levels with at least twelve doors leading off it! Two doors can be left open! Four more can open at 9:24 p.m. for exactly one minute! One door can have a portrait blocking it which will move when the teabag of truth and the water of honesty are put into the nearby kettle of justice! Five doors can have stupid symbols which need matching keys to open! Right, where to hide the keys? Right, I'll need a full sewer system, several outside balconies, several hidden rooms, what else?" 

The man looked at the plan he had drawn. To any normal person, it was a complete mess. He tilted his head and glared at it for a minute,

"Bah! Too simple! Anyone with a map and a GCSE in Geography could figure this out!"

The man grabbed a red crayon, closed his eyes and started scribbling madly to the left of his library plan. He opened his eyes again and wrote 'garden' over the randomly shaped mess. He went back to the main rapidly growing building that seemed to be laid out slightly randomly itself. He smiled as it seized a felt tip pen and began added new rooms to the outside,

"Ok! Observatory! Meeting Room! Storage Room! Kitchen! Another kitchen! Another observatory! Yes, another lovely building! Wait… it's missing something… what have I forgotten to include… damn… whatever it is, I always forget it… ah yes, a toilet. Damn it, why are people always moaning about a lack of toilets? There is normally one, you know! Right, most importantly the underground labs! Every library needs a full set of underground high tech labs to test its bio weapons in! Every building needs labs! Ok, just two things left to do!"

The man pulled a mobile phone out of his pocket and stabbed at the buttons before shouting into the phone,

"Ted! It's me! I'm going to need the usual; twelve typewriters, seventy five ink ribbons, ten first aid sprays and at least two thousand handgun bullets! Thanks, bye!"

The man got up and walked through a concealed door into a huge pitch-black room. He lit a candle to reveal thousands of sticks of dynamite. He pulled a wheelbarrow from the gloom and began shovelling the explosives in,

"Right, this should do! One standard self destruct system coming up!"

Meanwhile, while the narrator's attention slipped once again, Rebecca and Billy had decided, for obvious reasons, that both of them should go up to the roof. They walked to the circuit breakers which were conveniently right at the far end of the roof. Billy and Rebecca turned to each other as the wind and rain threatened to knock them off,

"Right, what do you know about circuitry?" asked Billy

"What? You're a trained army lieutenant and I'm a 17 year old medic – you deal with it"

"Fine" snapped Billy as he began prodding the complex circuitry with a fork he found in the dining car. As he continued to nervously prod at the delicate electrical 'things', he was both shocked and pleased by the sudden shower of sparks. On the plus side, the wires fizzed and sparked and sounded more operational. On the down side, the shower of sparks made Rebecca stumble back and fall through an inconveniently placed hole, possibly another test for the work experience boy who would normally have to do this while the older and more cynical staff jeered and threw things. Billy peered through the hole down at Rebecca who seemed shaken but unharmed,

"Hey, I did it! I fixed the electrical things! Come on, hurry up and get out of that room so we can explore the dining room!"

"The door's stuck, there's something stuck in the keyhole, so I can't unlock it"

"Right, what should I do"

"Explore the train to try and find an ice pick, that would work"

"Explore? Where? We've already explored the train"

"Don't worry, there's a key to the inspector's room here, which I send down to the newly opened kitchen through the dumbwaiter, thus allowing you to explore"

"Wow, now that's convenient for progression through the train. It's almost as if someone's deliberated orchestrated the order of items we encounter and events to ensure that the train only slowly becomes accessible to us to avoid it being too confusing. To find the key for a key area in an area I've only just opened. What are the odds are that happening?"

"It seems to happen a lot in the Raccoon Police Department building, now that is one complicated building. Now go get the ice pick so I can get past this door"

"Why? Why can't you just shoot the lock off? If an ice pick can get the door unstuck, surely the force of a bullet could do the job? In fact, why didn't we just shoot through the door to the kitchen?"

"Just go and get the ice pick"

"What exactly would an ice pick be doing on a passenger train Rebecca?"

"Just do it"

"What if you just pick up the key and I just lift you out of that room?"

"Ice pick. Now"

"Yes Rebecca"

Billy ambled back down the train and climbed back into the dining room. He passed the door Rebecca was trapped behind and, while tempted to try and talk her round or, better yet, just shoot the lock out himself, he could see that she had a very clear idea of how things should work. She was a real old fashioned six item girl and wasn't about to stop using keys with stupid symbols just because of him. He strolled into the kitchen through the flimsy automatic door that he had just gone onto the roof to fix. Having retrieved the key from the dumbwaiter, he walked back through the train to where he had met Rebecca to get into the newly accessible office. On the way he passed the corpse carriage. He was slightly bemused to find the undead sitting upright in the train seats paying full attention to the front of the carriage. At the front, an impromptu stage had been set up. Billy crept forwards and stumbled back in surprise when a 6 inch tall zombie came out of nowhere. Billy realised that this was a hand puppet. He got up onto one of the seats and glanced behind the stage to see a single zombie staring at a script,

"Brains" put forward the zombie nervously, causing several zombies to nod with a quiet sense of understanding. Billy decided to sit down and watch for a second. Another hand puppet appeared. It was a rather basic and simple imitation of Rebecca. She was holding a paper clip that had been twisted to resemble a gun,

"Brains, brains brains" she said in a higher voice than the zombie. The zombie's index finger raised the STARS standard issue paperclip. The zombie puppet began moving towards Rebecca and shook as Rebecca's paperclip began firing at him. Then, to Billy's confusion, a second zombie and, more importantly, a third puppet appeared. The situation was explained when Billy noticed that one of the zombies at the front was missing his left arm. The zombie had appeared behind Rebecca and was now moving slowly towards her without a single mention of any cerebral organs. While Rebecca was distracted by the first zombie, the second was getting closer to Rebecca. Billy was getting bored, so he drew his pistol and fired at the corpse sitting in front of him, who turned around and put a finger to his lips. Meanwhile, the second zombie had reached Rebecca and was presently tearing her, and the zombie's hand underneath, into bloody shards. The undead audience rose up from their seats and began cheering wildly. Billy, rather disturbed, decided to just move on quietly. 

He went through and opened the door with his new key. He walked into a new room and found what seemed to be a bedroom and office combined. On the bed, to Billy's great delight, was a big gun, a really big gun. A hunting gun. He also found a briefcase. A nearby document from the conductor revealed that he had put something very important in the briefcase. However, to open it required two special coins which he had helpfully hidden in awkward places throughout the train before dying. Billy, who had never played exactly by the rules of the universe, saw the obvious solution that nobody else apparently would. It was a briefcase. He had a knife. It was made of leather and contained something important. He had a sharp blade and a lack of patience. The omnipresent spirit of the Resident Evil universe groaned loudly as this sin against nature took place without Rebecca there to stop him. He found the rather useful key to the train's front carriage and, as tempting as it was to leave Rebecca locked in the kitchen and get on with things much more efficiently alone, he decided to search for the ice pick she so desperately wanted. He pressed a glowing red button and this caused a ladder to fall from the ceiling. As if this wasn't realistic enough, the ladder led to behind the bar in the train's pub, which was, most inconveniently for those odd individuals who liked a glass of wine with a meal, mysteriously far away from the dining car. Billy could just imagine how much the conductor must have loved having a hatch in the roof of his private cabin leading straight to what was probably the noisiest room in the train normally. Billy walked through the large empty room. Billy was slightly suspicious. Every room in the whole of Raccoon City was small as was possible to fit more rooms in. Large rooms just didn't exist without a good reason. He decided he would find the damn ice pick and then come back for the precious alcohol. As soon as he had a bit to drink, then he would decide whether or not to let Rebecca out. Billy felt that Rebecca was much like a mouse that he had caught under a bucket. She had been a great annoyance when she was free. While she was in her metaphorical bucket, she was quietly out of the way. If he were to let her out, there was a chance that she might be useful, but it was about as likely as letting the mouse out and then turning round to see an elephant charging.

Billy, tearing his eyes away from the precious vodka, opened the door and searched through the passageway. To his delight, surprise and slight depression, he actually found the ice pick that would let Rebecca feel justified in escaping. As he strolled back into the ominously empty room, there was a sudden shaking…


	7. I'll have the lobster with a shrubbery

Billy looked up at the ceiling as it continued to shake. Suddenly a claw tore through the thin metal and opened up the train carriage to the dark sky. Billy stared up, and was slightly bemused to see a large crustacean creature nervously glancing back. Billy lowered the gun that he had raised,

"Oh great, this is all the Umbrella corporation's fault"

The creature raised its pincers and hissed at Billy aggressively. Billy failed to react at all. The creature hissed louder and started moving its claws back and forth very quickly, snapping them quite close to Billy. Billy looked up at it,

"Look, don't expect a reaction. Firstly, you're the first boss. Secondly, you're one of Umbrella's giant creatures, they must keep a zoo, you're really not that scary. Thirdly, just in case this wasn't enough, you appear to be a giant lobster. I'm not scared. At all."

The creature hissed more loudly still and raised its tail into the air which it then started swinging madly, desperately trying to demonstrate that it was a scorpion. Billy looked up at the giant creature that hung over him threateningly, at least in principle, as the roof creaked under the strain,

"Hang on, how exactly did you get on the roof? It's hardly likely that you got onto the train while it was moving without the roof collapsing. Equally, it's impossible that you were on the train earlier as we were on the roof and we didn't see you. You're far too big to hide anywhere. So where have you been? Also, there's another thing." The scorpion rolled his eyes, this was going to take a while, "How likely is it honestly that one scorpion, and only one, would grow hugely. Why wouldn't more? Also, why would a giant scorpion, presumably quite high up the food chain, choose to cling to an empty train when the whole forest is full of giant spiders and dogs which are still easy for you to kill? Also, where in America that features heavy forest and no desert has a population of scorpions?"

The scorpion shrugged, its eyes darting from side to side, before rearing up in a rage at its logical existence being attacked, not that logic is hugely important in the Resident Evil universe, but this was a matter of honour. Giant spiders in large numbers were feasible. A giant crocodile in the sewer system, although somewhat relying upon urban myth, was possible. A giant scorpion riding a train waiting to attack when anyone passed underneath when the forest was full of easier prey was… questionable. At best. The scorpion stamped down with its feet, punching holes in the roof which buckled under the stress, causing the scorpion to fall through into the carriage. Then it hit Billy. The scorpion had just fallen on the bar. A giant lobster had just crushed the precious beer. An overgrown main course had just stamped out of existence Billy's most beautiful reason to live. This was unforgivable. Billy once again went against the laws of the universe, drawing his pistol and hunting gun at the same moment, one in each hand. The scorpion, once down on the floor, suddenly posed a far lesser threat. As Billy had so confidently stated, this was the first boss. It was hardly going to be tricky. Billy raised his weapons and fired. The bullets failed to register as the creature unrealistically guarded its face with its claws, thus giving away disturbingly obviously that the weak point was the face. The scorpion then charged, or as close as one can get to charging when scuttling is one's primary method of movement. For obvious reasons, the scorpion decided that it would be unfair to attack and defend at the same time, and so it lowered its pincers. Billy responded sportingly by letting off his hunting gun the moment it would hit the creature straight in the face and not before. It was sadly true that playing by the rules did sometimes work well. The scorpion squealed to let Billy know that he had found the correct tactics to kill him and backed off. It retreated to the back wall of the carriage and held up its claws, hissing in a mocking fashion, daring Billy to just try and hurt him. Billy didn't bother wasting the ammunition. The scorpion, with the T virus having presumably had no effect on the size of its brain, decided to charge again with the exact same tactics as before, lowering its guard before moving forwards in a straight line with its face a clear target. Billy yawned and shot it in the face again. It backed off again. Confident in the knowledge that repeating these rather simple tactics would kill the crustacean, Billy became just a bit too complacent. He raised his gun to the creature, charging with all the tactical finesse of the First World War, with an empty clip. The creature continued on its lethargic rampage and hit Billy in the stomach, interestingly knocking him back against the wall. The creature had Billy exactly where he wanted him. Billy was pinned against the wall with no chance of reloading and the scorpion could just crush him to death. Except for the fact that he was a first boss, and the unwritten law that they cannot be tricky to beat. The scorpion crushed Billy as best he could, sprayed acidic poison into Billy's face and then backed off, allowing Billy some more shots in. Billy slumped to the floor, temporarily dazed and nothing more and was surprised to see that the scorpion had officially managed to do no damage to him at all. Billy had in fact received a gentle hug and a mildly annoying soaking. He would, interestingly, have had a far greater risk of dying from being on the train under normal circumstances, and thus contracting Deep Vein Thrombosis, than he had fighting this scorpion, who appeared to have, as so many first bosses did, all the offensive might of the Andrex puppy. Billy continued firing and the scorpion collapsed, for no well explained reason. Why would 26 bullets to the head do nothing, yet the 27th kill it? Wouldn't it make much more sense for something new and special to be required to finish it off? Apparently not. Despite the fact that the creature had received no damage at all except to a single very small area, it was dead, and Billy guessed that it was probably better not to complain.

Billy climbed over the scorpion and examined the flattened beverages. Shattered glass covered the floor. The smell of vodka and whiskey was very strong. Billy wiped away a silent tear. He fell to his knees and began licking the floor desperately. A combination of the futility of his effort, the shards of razor sharp glass lining the floor and the fact that the scorpion was rapidly leaking an unknown green fluid onto the floor stopped him. The sad attempt to undo the scorpion's greatest injury to Billy resulted in far more injury than the scorpion himself had managed, cutting his tongue and causing a pain in his stomach. Billy resignedly climbed down the hatch into the office. It was most odd how the hundreds of bottles of broken alcohol had not leaked at all down into this room. Equally, how the scorpion's weight had collapsed the carriage's roof yet left no imprint or stress on the ceiling to the room he was presently in was a complete mystery. 

Billy strolled back through the train and entered the increasingly scary, for various reasons, corpse carriage and was surprisingly not surprised by what he saw. It was sadly expected for something stupid to be happening here, and Billy was not disappointed, or rather, he was, by what was happening. 

Billy was confronted immediately by the campest of the zombies gesturing for him to leave with a limp wrist. Billy responded by gesturing towards his gun, so the zombie walked off in a huff. Several of the zombies were sitting around in the chairs reading from thick stacks of paper. The camp zombie settled down into his director's chair and called out,

"Brains! Brains!"

The zombies all stood up and moved in odd positions around the room with some confusion. Most zombies hid behind the director, and another walked to the far side of the carriage from Billy. The director pointed for Billy himself to move forwards slightly, which he reluctantly did. A zombie shuffled past him and stood behind him looking slightly sheepish. The director looked around, clapped his hands twice and yelled,

"Brains"

Upon this command, one of the zombies began shambling forwards slightly ridiculously. He was swaying from side to side and doing a remarkably good job of looking like a bad actor trying to imitate a zombie. He walked forwards with his arms outstretched, almost seeming like he was trying to parody himself, while occasionally waving madly at Billy to keep his attention. The zombie took a deep breath, opened his mouth and stopped still. Blushing to the greatest extent a mouldy creature with limited circulation can, he turned to director with his head well and truly down, looking exceedingly distressed. The director flicked through the script and thumbed through the dialogue before turning to the forgetful member of the undead and hissing at him,

"Brains!"

The metaphorical light bulb lit up above the zombie's head and with a look of genuine enlightenment, he continued his OTT march forwards happily yelling,

"Brains, brains, brains!"

Meanwhile Billy was becoming increasingly aware of a zombie doing an appalling job of trying to sneak up behind him, not least as shambling is not the quietest form of movement and, though he was trying hard, the zombie was clearly unable to refrain from muttering 'brains' quietly. Billy, deciding to let them finish their rehearsal alone, moved on quietly, pushing past the director who called,

"Brains" causing the two stars of the show to relax while the remaining zombies crowded round them, cheering 'brains' and congratulating them, Billy presumed, for their excellent acting, at least by undead standards.

He strolled through to the kitchen and put the ice pick into the dumbwaiter which he then sent up to Rebecca. He waited sulkily at the bottom of the stairs to the dining car as she walked down to him,

"There, that wasn't too difficult, was it? You took your time though"

"Of course, no problem," said Billy sarcastically, still giving no reason why he had just gone through all that when he could have just left the train, "Rebecca, you're a medic aren't you? I need some treatment. I got injured… by fighting a giant scorpion. It was huge and so tough and I rock for killing it. But I picked up some injuries as he was so tough, but not too many because I'm so much tougher"

"Right, where are your injuries?"

"There's a gash on my arm, I've got some stomach pain, it sprayed me with poison and I've got some bad cuts on my tongue"

"How did the scorpion give you cuts on your tongue…" Rebecca closed her eyes and shuddered, "Never mind. Right, the arm gash is easy" Rebecca took a white tube with 'first-aid spray' written on it. She took off the lid and sprayed it on Billy's bleeding arm. The arm healed instantly. She then sprayed some into his mouth, causing his tongue to instantly heal. Billy turned to Rebecca,

"You said you were a trained medic? Just out of interest, how long did that training take?"

"About 4 hours, but I am a slow learner"

"Why exactly would STARS bother bringing you along as a trained medic? It doesn't really seem like a hard job, to be honest"

"Ah, that's what you think now, but I haven't dealt with you completely yet!"

"Ok, fine, what are you going to do about the stomach pain?"

"I've got a special idea about that. Earlier, while I was in the dining room, I saw this, it's a very special medicine" Rebecca ran up the stairs excitedly and returned with her hands behind her back, "Close your eyes!" she whined at Billy, which he did. When he did reopen his eyes, he was slightly… not surprised, but just depressed by what he saw. Rebecca appeared to be holding a pot containing a shrubbery. Billy looked up at her beaming face and, though criticising her was like kicking a puppy, decided that he had to point out the obvious,

"Rebecca, this is a pot plant. Furthermore, it is a pot plant you found on a train full of creatures infected with a strange virus. Beyond this, you have no idea what it actually is. Most importantly, this is a small shrubbery."

"No, it's a green herb"

"Ok, fine, what sort of green herb?"

"… It's a green herb. That's it"

"There are multiple types of herbs, you know?"

"No, this a Raccoon City green herb. You can recognise it because it's green. You eat it and get better"

"Rebecca, experts can spend their lives studying types of herbs and the subtle differences between them. Are you honestly trying to tell me that there is only one type of herb in Raccoon City and the highly forested area around it, and that every herb will have the same instant effect, having been identified by you on account of its colour alone?"

"Yes, now eat it"

"Umm, it's a plant, you seem to know your stuff, can't you prepare it or something? Don't you need to crush it or boil it or something?"

"No, it's eaten raw, now get eating" Billy did indeed eat the shrubbery, somewhat reluctantly and, though his stomach pains were not the least bit improved, he feared what Rebecca might suggest as a secondary course of action and so kept quiet. However, his poisoned state was somewhat pressing, so he enquired as to what might be the best course of action to combat this. Rebecca grinned insanely as she ran upstairs again and returned with a blue shrubbery. Billy sighed,

"Should I ask?"

"No, get eating"

"You know, maybe I should be the medic out of us two"

"Eat the herb"

"Yes Rebecca"


	8. The diabolical plotting of Dr Marcus

Rebecca, feeling happy that her medical knowledge had come in useful, and Billy, feeling… well, feeling like he had just eaten a pot plant that was blue, walked back down the train. Billy got the key card he had removed from the briefcase earlier and showed it off to Rebecca. Unfortunately, after sounding far more impressed about him getting the key than killing the scorpion, a feat that, at least for people like Rebecca who made everything as hard as possible, was far more tricky than the latter, she asked where it had come from. Billy decided that the truth could well make her burn him at the stake on principal as a Resident Evil heretic. He looked up and began,

"There was a clock… with several hands missing," Rebecca nodded, this was far from unlikely, as Billy continued, "and there was a Greek symbol by each number. And by inserting a… security disk that I found, I mean collected from the corpse of the scorpion thing, I could move the three hands which I found in various offices by playing a game of Monopoly that someone left out and spelling out 'key' in the Greek symbols, which caused the key to drop out"

Billy stopped still and looked around, trying to find the source of an irregular 'thud' noise, which, unbeknown to him, was being caused by the omnipresent personification of the laws of physics within the Resident Evil universe banging his metaphorical head against the metaphorical table in front of him, firstly because of his own slightly cumbersome name, secondly, because of how ridiculous Billy's explanation was, and finally, and most importantly, because Billy had just created what was actually a very plausible potential part of Resident Evil 4.

Billy and Rebecca reached the door to the corpse carriage. They both sighed and started kicking their feet, not making eye contact,

"Well, I'm not going in there," said Rebecca, "They want to eat me"

"Yes well, I'm not just walking in, they want to try out new tactics for killing you on me. I'm at more risk. Anyway, we should be fine, I don't think they're ready yet, they still need more practice to have a chance"

Rebecca reluctantly nodded and reached forwards for the door. She recoiled in shock as the door opened a crack without her touching it and a sign was hung on the door reading 'brains brains, brains'. Rebecca and Billy looked at each other. Billy leaned forwards to see on the bottom of the sign in small print 'do not disturb, please' in various languages. Billy sighed again. He knew they had to go through the door. Well it was that or wait for the train to reach the station when they could get off. Billy opened the door and gave the general room a dour gaze. Rebecca was actually slightly impressed. The zombies were all seated on the floor with their legs crossed in deep meditation, quietly repeating 'brains' slowly and peacefully as the head zombie clicked together those little finger cymbals, the name of which escaped Rebecca and, more importantly, the narrator and writer. Luckily the zombies hadn't noticed her yet and, as they were no doubt readying their state of mind for her own bloody slaughter, she had no intention of changing this, quietly walking past a zombie and herself muttering 'brains' repeatedly and thus fulfilling any entrance criteria to become a zombie and also fully mastering its customs with one well observed word. They left the carriage and hoped that they would not need to enter again.

They walked forwards to the new door and paused for a minute as Rebecca thought about what had happened. She turned to Billy,

"I know that it was quite pathetic really, but Marcus did say that he was a final boss and an ultimate bad guy. With some practice he could potentially hurt us. What do you think happened to him?"

"I'm afraid I agree. He'll be back, and next time he'll have put some planning into his plan. I wonder where he is now. I bet he's hiding somewhere, plotting something exceedingly evil"

Billy was not quite as close to the truth as he had thought. Somewhere, which the narrator feels an obligation not to reveal the exact location of given that firstly a mysteriously anonymous place is always foreboding and secondly the real location was actually only a few minutes walk from a petrol station, thus reducing the fearfulness of the image, was a twisted and gnarled tree. It had not always been so, but Evil had done some renovations to keep up appearances. Hidden was a disguised door in the tree, behind several layers of overgrown vines. The door was huge and foreboding, as Evil was well aware, not least as Evil had been forced to send off for catalogues from Europe to see what various manufacturers had as an Evil line in doors. The cracked gargoyle head was in fact plastic, and had been part of a Halloween costume. The door was covered in at least 50 rusty looking locks, which, contrary to appearances, were actually not rusty, but really perfectly functional and regularly cleaned and oiled, but painted red and brown to give the impression of Evil being, well, Evil. 

When most people see a door of Evil, they assume that it is because Evil is so different that it is not concerned with aesthetics and so the door has been neglected, owing to the Evilness of the individual within it. In fact, the clichéd Evil layer of rust and filth is proof that Evil is actually very well tuned to how things look and far more caring about such matters than the average middle class individual. To buy a normal door takes a trip to Ikea. To buy an Evil looking door, and maintain its very particular Evil look, takes great care and attention, not least as Evil is often contrary to efficiency and a truly Evil door would not open, even to Evil itself, owing, as mentioned earlier, to extreme rust around the locks. 

The door, from the other side, looked quite different, and so proved the narrator's point, being a plain oak door with a bolt to stop potential thieves and a plaque reading 'bless this mess' with 'Satan' scrawled at the beginning by Marcus himself to keep the tone suitably dark. The inside of Marcus' tree featured electricity and plumbing, though they were occasionally shut off due to Marcus having problems with keeping up with bills, partially as the postman had difficulties in delivering such notices and, more so, as Evil is not a particularly well paid career, being self employed, as it involves much waiting around for protagonists. 

By the door stood a cage containing a canary that Marcus was quick to remind visitors, who tended to be Evil, that he only kept using the logic that if a butterfly flapping its wings in the Pacific could cause a tornado in the United States, just imagine what destruction Polly could bring upon the puny mortals! Scattered around the flat were various other items that Marcus insisted repeatedly in the presence of Evil… well, Evil doesn't officially have friends – working alone is far more sinister – so maybe accomplices is appropriate, were purely for Evil purposes. There was kettle, purely to create hot water to scald people with, of course. There was a TV set, solely to spy on the foolish machinations of the puny ants, evidently. And there was a microwave, mainly to pop small rodents for the fun of it, clearly, although Marcus was willing to admit that the latter was used more often for heating microwave meals. The problem for Marcus was that certain standards are expected of Evil, and these standards do not include a modern tiled kitchen with a breakfast bar, even if it is out of the public's eye. Marcus was supposed to spend his evening contemplating the destruction of the universe, not, as actually happened, wondering if the light in the fridge went off. Marcus didn't even have a termite problem in his flat anymore, and most of the forces of Evil had a supposedly commendable rat population. Marcus was quick to remind Evil that he did have a substantial leech infestation, but he really knew that it was not really in the spirit of Evil when there a leech flap in the door and a sandpit in a corner for them to play in. For all these reasons and more, Marcus was, by Evil's standards anyway, quite the new man, and accordingly felt that filthy dungeons were contrary to hygiene, Ikea kitchens were pleasingly useful and that if a man wanted to wear a dress, he should be able to wear a bloody dress and not get teased about it. The 'traditional' Evil of this world, that is to say, the sort that had replaced one of its arms with a giant claw and was considered gifted if its vocabulary could extend to one word, always viewed Marcus with a sort of contempt at the declining standards in Evil. Marcus was unsure what they should expect of a 75 year old doctor whose only discernible powers were shape shifting and controlling molluscs. 

Marcus occasionally entertained and the Tyrants and G types, although always roaring in disgust at the luxury, or rather lack of squalor, that Marcus lived in, would never turn down the chance to have another one of his salmon nibbles. Marcus made every effort to give a good impression to the 'traditional' Evil of this world and to live his life according to Evil principles, he was happy to kill people for example, but would draw the line when Evil would significantly reduce his quality of life or pose a hygiene risk, not least as persuading rodent exterminators to come out into Raccoon forest was tricky at best, and so he made it a matter of principle not to leave out the entrails of his fallen adversaries or breadcrumbs, if possible.

Marcus actually did a fair job of being Evil. Being Evil was disturbingly easy. All you needed to do was hang back and let your leeches deal with it. Killing was easy for giant super molluscs who were 60% muscle and 40% teeth, and, technically, as Marcus was himself a leech collective, he was doing all the killing personally. Well, technically, Marcus was not a leech collective, he was a Leech Queen, a fact that had won him many unfair and cruel nicknames from the more bastard-like forces of Evil. The problem was appearing Evil. To kill was easy. To appear Evil while killing was always something Marcus had struggled with and so, despite an actually impressive massacre record, he was never taken seriously by the forces of good or Evil (it was standard Evil diplomatic policy to spell good with a small 'g', just to wind up the bastards). Marcus had been reminded of this earlier that very night. He had come up with a great way of impressing Evil, he was going to stop and destroy a full train of people for that most Evil of reasons, revenge. Things had been going great. The leeches had all been wonderful in killing and eating, but he had run across that most annoying of the forces of good, protagonists. There had been 2 of them! Tyrants had been known to fall to a single protagonist, so what was he supposed to do against 2 of them? Things had been going so well, then, just when the train was completely empty, those 2 had shown up and embarrassed him. Evil would hear about this and they would never let him forget it. Marcus had only one choice; he would have to hunt them down and kill them horribly to make amends. 

Tonight, however, he was not quite up to it. If Evil called and asked why he wasn't doing something immediately about this to restore Evil's reputation then he would officially say that it was because it was still raining. In actual fact, he was just not feeling up to it right now. Marcus was slumped in a leather arm chair in front of a fire that was mainly dying embers as he couldn't be bothered to get up. He had a fever and felt generally yucky (not a word he used in front of Evil). He also had a runny nose and kept sniffing, officially because, though he hated to admit it, Rebecca had been correct that, if he had known that it had been going to rain then he would have worn a slightly longer tunic with a hood, and so he now had a bad cold. However, it was also at least a third because of Billy's stinging rebukes that he was now still sniffing and getting through tissues at an alarming rate. At least his leeches were being sympathetic. Two had volunteered to be on 'forehead duty', taking it in shifts to spend five minutes in the freezer and then five minutes on Marcus' forehead to keep his temperature down. Several more leeches had done an admirable job of making a cup of tea, which several leeches were slowly conveying to Marcus on a tray on wheels, which they had tied around their bodies with string. Marcus sniffed and stared glumly into the fire. He sniffed again and suddenly violently sneezed, causing his nose to detach from his head and fly to the floor. It hit the ground with an odd squelching noise and reverted from its nose like appearance to the leech that it was actually made of. The leech muttered something under his breath, not least as this was the fourth time that this had happened in the last ten minutes, and slithered back up Marcus' leg and torso to his head before morphing back into a nose like shape. Marcus had been sitting for some time, brooding over what had happened. Then he realised. There was a plus side. The T virus would lead Rebecca and Billy to Umbrella and Marcus' old labs in the forest. All Marcus had to do was go to the Umbrella complex and he could kill those two, destroy another Umbrella facility and maybe be generally Evil in other ways. Yes, that would work very well indeed. Marcus would put his plan into action to show Evil that he was still himself Evil, just as soon as he felt better.

Meanwhile, Rebecca and Billy had gone through the door which Billy's key card had been for. They crept round a corner, since they could overhear men talking…


	9. And in an emergency?

Rebecca and Billy stood completely still, trying to hear the voices of the men, who were fortunately shouting over a radio to be heard by the man on the over end. Both men were in full body armour and carried semi automatic weaponry. Billy wondered where these men had come from and how they got on the train exactly. He also wondered how, when he and Rebecca and just spent a significant amount of time finding the key card to get to where they were, these men had just managed to be here. Also, why were they standing outside in the rain when trying to be heard over the radio when it was presumably far quieter and thus easier to be heard inside the carriage itself? The man began to yell into the radio again,

"Yes Commander Wesker, the train is completely infected. Everyone's dead and the T virus has spread across species disturbingly rapidly" Billy wondered how the man knew all this when he had clearly not examined the level of infection throughout the train as Billy and Rebecca had not run into them at all and had to come to the conclusion that he, guessing, was a slacker. The man continued, "Of course Commander Albert Wesker, we'll destroy the train at once, that name one more time, Albert Wesker, sorry Commander Wesker, I don't know what made me do that. Anyway, we'll get on with destroying the train right now. Ok, bye… yes, bye… no, you hang up… no, you hang up… no, you hang up… ok, fine, I'll see you tomorrow, sweet dreams, bye"

The man never got the chance to change the train's course, however, as a number of leeches slivered through an air conditioning vent behind him and swarmed over him. The man screamed but was completely eaten within seconds, before the leeches turned on the other man, and killed him before slipping back through the grill from where they had come. Billy found this most odd. Rebecca had survived the leeches swarming over her for some time with no ill effects whatsoever aside from being a bit slimy. How odd then that these men, who had been wearing full body armour when Rebecca had been wearing a quite feminine military uniform that lacked protection, had died instantly. How odd it also was, it occurred to Billy, that a few shots from his pistol had made the leeches retreat off Rebecca, yet these men, carrying semi automatic weaponry, had never even thought of defending themselves with these weapons.

Rebecca and Billy walked past the corpses and into the driver's carriage. It was all rather confusing with dials and levers everywhere. Billy decided to leave such technical operations to the trained police officer. Rebecca started suddenly squealing in a high pitched voice to Billy's annoyance. She spun round and started gushing,

"The train's going to crash!"

"How? Those men only just got the order to crash the train! How can it already be going to crash?"

"I don't know! It's going to crash in five minutes!"

"How do you know that?"

"It says it here on the dials!"

"That makes no sense! If the train knows where and when it's going to crash, why the hell would it not be automatically designed to activate an emergency braking system!" On the far side of Raccoon City, The Architect was chuckling to himself. Rebecca turned to Billy from the dials again,

"This is no time for an accurate cynical desiccation of the improbability of the present situation! We're wasting seconds!"

"Fine, what do we need to do? Presumably the emergency brake will be easy to activate, yes?"

"Right, it talks about it here" said Rebecca, looking at a manual about the emergency brake that somebody had helpfully left out on the side, presumably as the emergency brake was one of those things that they often used, "Ok, there are two consoles we need to activate to throw the emergency brake. One is at the front of the train, here, and one is at the very back. Get going!"

"What? That makes no sense! The point of an emergency brake is to able for it to be activated in an emergency! Right, we have five minutes, and we're in the control room, just activate the normal brake!"

"But, but we're in an emergency, we have to use the emergency brake!"

"Just find out how you activate the normal brake!"

"Right… maybe you should just go and activate the emergency brake" said Rebecca, flicking through the manual,

"What do you have to do for the normal brake?"

"Fine, do you have a 'security disk A', an Umbrella crest, a score of piano music or the medal of wolf or eagle?"

"I'll just go and get the emergency break…" sighed Billy, "Right, you keep the hunting gun in case those zombies come and get you, I'll take my pistol, meanwhile you figure out how to activate the brakes!"

"Wait, take on of these!" said Rebecca, passing him one of the two walkie-talkies that were out in the carriage, "This way, I'll be able to tell you what to do with the brake at the back! Now get going, we've only got four minutes left!"

Billy ran out of the carriage and through the train. He made it through the first carriage and then flung open the door to the next carriage as he ran. He screeched to a halt and stumbled back at what he saw. A man stood in front of him. Billy had no idea whether he was a zombie or a human. He was clearly male and was wearing clothing much like Rebecca's, clearly showing the STARS insignia. If this man was dead, he hadn't been for long, as his skin looked quite normal. To Billy's great surprise, the zombie's malicious grin of pure evil sank into a slightly annoyed grimace at the sight of Billy and the zombie started talking,

"Who the hell are you?"

"I'm Billy Coen, I'm a protagonist and right now I want to get to the end of the train to activate the emergency brakes. And you might be?"

"I'm… the zombie Edward Dewey!"

"Who?"

"I was in STARS, I used to be a team-mate of Rebecca"

"And why might you be here right now?"

"I'm the final boss!"

"You? But you're just a zombie, how can you be the final boss?"

"Hey, don't ask me, I'm as surprised as you are, but look, there's a time limit to this battle, so you have to defeat me before the train's self destruct system goes off, so I must be the boss" said Edward smugly

"Actually, that time limit has nothing to do with you. All I have to do is activate the emergency brake. You're just an annoying obstruction"

"No, I'm dramatic. Not for you, admittedly, but… could you call Rebecca please, I'm sure she can explain how I'm the final boss" Billy sighed, the timer was getting ever lower and he really couldn't afford many more amusing distractions, but he nonetheless radioed Rebecca,

"Rebecca, there's a zombie here that claims to know you, he says his name's Edward Dewey, do you know him?"

"Yes, he was my team-mate… what's he doing here… could you pass me over to him, please" Billy did so, "Hello Edward, what are you doing here on the train, how did you get on board when it was moving?"

"I didn't, I fell in through the window earlier after being bitten by dogs, don't you remember?"

"Edward, you're not even in this fic, your part was left out because it just wasn't funny"

"Well, I'm here now, so could I have a boss part, please? Anyway… I'm dramatic…" sniffed Edward

"Look," interrupted Billy, taking the radio back, "why the hell are you dramatic anyway? You're just a zombie!"

"Yes, but I'm Rebecca's team-mate! When she runs through the train, then I planned to ambush her, which is very dramatic because she has to face the moral dilemma of killing a zombie who she used to know!"

"Yes, well, Rebecca isn't here, I'm Billy Coen, I want to get past you, I don't know you, I'm a convicted murderer anyway, and I have no moral problem with shooting you as well"

"Umm…" Edward whimpered, "Could you go and get Rebecca please, I want a showdown with her"

"Um, Rebecca, what should I do about him, given that we only have about three minutes left until we die horribly?"

"Could you just humour him, please, he was a nice guy really, let him have his little final boss fantasy"

"Fine… Rebecca, help!" yelled Billy, feigning panic towards Edward

"Don't worry Billy, I'm coming!" yelled Rebecca in response, beginning a mock run towards the nearby carriage. She burst through the doors in which Billy was cowering away from Edward. Billy turned to her and said melodramatically,

"What is that thing?"

"I don't know!"

Billy began firing on Edward, who seemed temporarily bemused as to what he was supposed to do. Rebecca hissed at him,

"Lie down" which Edward accordingly did. Both of them lowered their raised weapons and Rebecca uttered the immortal line that all final bosses are honoured with, "Thank goodness it's all finally over…" before adding a quiet, "Ed, get up!"

As Edward slowly rose from his first, well, second death into his third 'life', Billy and Rebecca gasped melodramatically before Rebecca yelled at Billy,

"Whatever that thing is, use this to kill it!" yelled Rebecca as she got out the hunting gun, the closest thing to a rocket launcher she had on her, and threw it to Billy. As he caught it, time obeyed the laws of the Resident Evil universe and accordingly slowed down. Billy brushed a disobedient strand of hair back into place, yelled,

"Hey Edward! Eat this!" before pulling the trigger. Time slowed down to its slowest possible movement and the shell crawled through the air disturbingly sluggishly, leaving those stupid looking Matrix style rings behind it for some reason. The shell continued on its ambling journey towards Edward and reached the half way, before Billy, slightly concerned by the pressing time constraints of the situation, slightly speeded up time again with the time dimmer switch by the door marked 'for use in case of boss'. The shell struck Edward straight in the forehead and shattered his head as he slumped to the ground,

"Ah well," said Rebecca, relaxing, "at least that's how he wanted to die. Now, get on with the whole emergency brake thing, I'll get back to working on the one at the front. And try not to waste anymore time" Rebecca rushed back through the door towards the front of the train while Billy continued backwards to the rear carriage. He entered the corpse carriage with barely a thought and was surprised to see it empty. A cry of 'brains' came from somewhere and the zombies came out from their hiding places. Another turned to Billy and said 'brains?'

"No, Rebecca isn't here, but I'm sure she'll be along soon, so you just keep hiding and not getting in my way, ok?"

The zombies got no chance to reply as Billy ran on past them, and made it the end of the train with no more interruptions. He found the box for the emergency brake at the very end of the train and pressed the only illuminated button on it. The console clicked once and lit up fully. A message appeared on the screen,

"To activate brake, please enter 8 non-consecutive integers with a total of 52"

"Oh, for God's sake…" muttered Billy, as he reached for his radio, "Rebecca, what's an integer?"

"Um, it's a whole number, could you leave me alone for a minute, I'm trying to working out 7 non-consecutive numbers that add up to 39"

"This is the stupidest system imaginable. Is it even remotely likely that an emergency brake, designed to used to stop a train in an emergency, would require complex arithmetic to operate"

"Right, I've got my numbers sorted, I just need you to get your numbers correct and we're safe…"

"Rebecca, maths really isn't my thing, could you come and sort this out for me, please?" said Billy sheepishly

"Look, 52 is divisible is 4, so all you need to do is find a pair of non-consecutive numbers that add up to 13 and enter them 4 times"

"What's a non-consecutive number?"

"Billy, we've only got about 2 minutes to go, can't you work it out… oh fine, I'm coming" sighed Rebecca, as she seized the hunting gun she had reclaimed from Billy after the battle with Edward and set out from the driver's carriage to the back. She rushed until she reached the corpse carriage. They were disciplined, they were well meditated, and they were well rehearsed. This was going to be interesting…

Rebecca opened the door and stepped through into the admittedly forebodingly empty carriage. The zombies had done an impressive job with atmosphere, she had to admit. Rebecca drew her pistol and proceeded slowly. There was a faint groan of 'brains' though the source escaped Rebecca. This was admittedly impressive. Rebecca continued to creep forwards. She gasped and stumbled backwards as a single zombie leapt up from the chair in front of her and began walking towards her purposefully. Rebecca acknowledged that, while this was somewhat predictable, it was at least well organised. Rebecca began firing on the advancing zombie as, unbeknown to her, another had silently risen behind her. As the second bullet passed through the advancing zombie, the second crept behind her. As the third bullet was fired, the stealth zombie leapt from the shadows and seized Rebecca. It bit her hard in the neck, tearing through her soft flesh, and the zombies all stuck their heads from their hiding places to see the death of Rebecca. Rebecca, released from the zombie's grasp, staggered forwards away from the zombie but, against the zombies' expectations, she did not fall to the ground, but rather reached to her belt. She drew a first-aid spray, a factor the zombies had not counted on, which she then sprayed onto her neck, which instantly healed. The zombies looked around. This was unexpected. Rebecca looked up,

"That was it? You spent all that time on that? Ok, fine, you want to play tough? Let's go then!" Rebecca said as she noticed several zombies get up as if planning to launch a full attack on her. She drew her hunting gun, "Ok, anyone who wants to fight, come on then! This is a hunting gun, and it was designed to have the power to take down an undead elephant" Rebecca did not need to demonstrate as the zombies all backed down immediately. 

She carried on and got to Billy, who was awkwardly pressing at buttons in an attempt at operating the console using the million ex-marines cracking the code of a million emergency brakes logic. Rebecca looked at the console. They had only 30 seconds left. Rebecca quickly entered 9, 4, 9, 4, 9, 4, 9, 4. The omnipresent Architect growled at the emergency brake, despite every effort on his part, having been activated. The train screeched as the brakes activated. The Architect had not been defeated yet. The emergency brakes were hardly the most effective of slowing mechanisms and, though the brakes, designed to stop the train quickly in an emergency, had been activated on a passenger train, not the speediest of machines, the train had no intention of just stopping. Rebecca and Billy rushed back to the front of the train and were shocked to see the train still moving very fast off the main track to the destination where it was supposed to crash. Rebecca and Billy sped through a dark tunnel and, as they saw the end of the line approaching far too fast, they both dived to the ground, unthinkingly holding tightly to each other… 


	10. Resiphysics

Billy groaned and got up. He was in what had once been a train station. The train was on his side behind him and was still burning. This struck Billy as more than slightly odd. The station was at the end of a tunnel and the train had managed, having hit the end of the track at enormous speed, to simply turn over instead of actually hitting the wall. The fact that he was alive was lucky enough to be unrealistic. It also struck him as odd that something was burning. Surely any substance that would burn would have simply exploded when the train had crashed. Billy looked around and saw Rebecca lying nearby. He ran over to her and, shaking her madly, was relieved to see her wake up almost immediately. They got up and looked around, not saying anything at all. They were both pleasantly surprised to note that some of their items had survived the train crash. Billy was thrilled to see the Hookshot having survived the crash and having been thrown right onto the platform where they could access it. Billy was surprised to see a box of bullets for his handgun had also survived, despite having been discarded in the middle of one of the carriages that was presently burning, having been crushed into a small cube. Billy was finally just sceptical that several healing herbs had survived the crash and fire and were sitting on the platform, waiting for use, not burnt at all, with their pots in perfect condition, despite having been thrown from a crashing train onto a concrete floor, in a crash violent enough to, by their absence, have killed the occupants of the corpse carriage. Clearly, the forces of dramatic convenience had been at work again. 

Rebecca and Billy decided to collect up whatever useful items they could salvage from the train, which was made more difficult by every item in the entire train that Billy had touched having survived. Billy, picking up ammunition and first aid sprays, asked Rebecca to collect the Hookshot, mainly as any item had such a specific and unusual function would inevitably be needed again sooner or later. A look of pure terror flashed across Rebecca's face,

"I can't pick that thing up!"

"Why not?"

"Because I'm already holding five items, and that thing takes up two blocks of my inventory space!" screamed Rebecca. Billy sighed at her interesting perception of the universe and her self-imposed laws of physics. Billy decided to try and see if the unalterable laws of physics were in any way negotiable,

"But, what if you just put down an item? Then you have 2 blocks left, yes?"

"Put…down… an item…?" said Rebecca, her voice flicking between shock, confusion and great terror, "But, where's the item chest?"

"No, there isn't an item chest, but what if you get out an item and put it down on the floor and then pick up a different one?"

"Look, STARS taught me to work with item chests, all STARS officers use item chests, and you can't just put things down!"

"Ok, just watch me" said Billy slowly, taking an ink ribbon out of his pocket slowly. He bent down and laid it on the floor. He slowly stood up and walked away from it backwards. With every step backwards, Rebecca's mouth fell more open. She instinctively drew her pistol and aimed it straight at Billy's head, saying through tears,

"What the hell are you?!?" Billy stood completely still. He had partially expected this reaction, or one like it anyway. He spoke slowly and calmly,

"Rebecca, there's no need to be scared. I know that this must be very confusing for you, but you have to learn how to get by in the real world if you want to survive. Where I come from, people put things down all the time…"

"It's not true!" yelled Rebecca, "People just pick things up and then deposit them into an item chest. And as soon as we've put every item in the world into a chest then we'll be able to have world peace at last!"

Rebecca remembered back to her first Christmas. Her memories are probably not what the reader is expecting. Most people see Christmas as a happy time, but things were, as in so many fields, completely different in Raccoon City. To be a small girl who believed, basically to the point of her religion being the First Church of Resident Evil Logic, that one could only ever hold 6 items at a time, imagine how horrific it was to see under the tree seemingly endless boxes of gifts, so many of which might take up 2 or even 3 inventory screen blocks. Every gift was a terrifying proposition. Rebecca had to balance the need to never put anything down, never carry more than 6 things and show proper appreciation, not done by being physically unable to pick something up. Every other present required a trip to the item chest and she always felt so ungrateful when she put granny's jumper into the item chest within minutes of unwrapping it. Christmas was just one big guilt trip.

Rebecca's mind skipped forwards to her teenage years (well, her younger teenage years) where she had eagerly decided to study the Raccoon equivalent of Religious Studies, Resiphysics. The basis of Resiphysics was that Raccoon City's founder had laid down 10 simple commandments by which people should live their lives to avoid the implosion of the universe. These were,

Thou shalt never carry more than 6 items

Thou shall see that dogs are not man's best friend, but are damn hard to aim at

Thou shalt accept that important battles will always have a time limit

Thou shall keep telling thyself that giant animals are scary

Thou shall accept that the most unlikely solution is invariably the correct one

Thou shalt seek out shiny things, for they will lead to more shiny things

Thou shalt not even bother asking where the nearest toilet is

Thou shalt acknowledge that it quite often is blood

Thou shalt not run and use guns simultaneously, unless thou is in a cut-scene

Thou shalt never put anything down

And now Billy was threatening these fundamental principles! How could he do these things? Where had he come from? As Rebecca's mind raced, Billy tired to calmly explain the rational of his suggestion,

"Rebecca, how do items get out into the world in the first place? How did that Hookshot get to where we found it?" Rebecca was silent, "They were put there by someone, who probably got them from someone else, who may have bought it"

"What are you talking about?" yelled Rebecca, who may have had a slightly sheltered youth, "What does 'bought' mean?"

"It's ok, Rebecca, you don't need to worry about that now" said Billy, interested at how citizens of Raccoon City lived their lives, given that they appeared to work around an obsessive collecting fetish, although the advantage was that litter was well under control, "Just try and learn that it's fine to put down items" 

Rebecca lowered her gun and got a green pot plant out of her pocket, which she, after a long pause, dropped to the ground as she leapt back and closed her eyes. She opened her left eye to see Billy frowning at her, although her main concern was that the universe had not collapsed as a result of her action. She actually smiled,

"Billy Coen, you're having a very bad effect on me. Do you have any idea how shocked Jill or Chris would be if they knew I was doing this?" Billy did his best to change the subject. He pointed out the door in the wall that he noticed and began,

"Rebecca, where are we?"

"I don't know"

"Well, this was clearly a train station, so I guess that at least that door will lead to somewhere obvious so that we can find out where we are, after all, it's hardly likely that a train station would be hard to access from wherever we are, so I guess that we'll be able to escape quite easily as well!"

The pair over to the door and opened it, before recoiling back at the smell that hit them, as they entered what they saw was a sewer. Once again, The Architect had done himself proud. Apparently the first trial of any person to arrive at this station was to cross the river of sewage that had been built, presumably, for a little bit of fun after a long boring train journey. Unless of course they had arrived on a train of the same specifications as the one that Billy and Rebecca had, in which case they probably had a headache from the excessive item use required just to get to the dining car. 

Billy and Rebecca waded through the raw sewage, and climbed out of the other side. They were hardly surprised to see a ladder at the far end that they had climb up. At the far end of Raccoon City, The Architect was frowning at the map of the very building that our heroes were in. He just couldn't understand. The people had asked for an underground rail system and they had asked for a full sewer system. The fact that the two occasionally crossed paths was apparently a problem, even though it was efficient and simple for the plumbers.

As Billy pushed open the sewer covering and helped Rebecca up, he looked around. He was in what seemed to be the main entrance hall to a building. This was another clear victory for that most dastardly subsidiary of Evil, architecture. Apparently, nobody had had a problem with a tunnel full of disgusting smelling sewage having a opening into, of all places, a large ornate clearly important and often used hallway. Billy looked around and said to Rebecca,

"Oh great. Oh wonderful. We're back in an Umbrella facility"

"How do you know that?"

"Look around" said Billy pointing around the room. Rebecca first noticed that one door had a complex flame pattern on it. Another two doors had giant clock diagrams over them. There was also a huge portrait with the scales of justice in front of it. Rebecca began strolling around the room. She found that 6 doors had been locked and another 3 were locked from the other side, somehow managing to tell which was which sort simply by looking at the door. She sadly conceded that this was probably an Umbrella facility, although it also had quite a few similarities to the Raccoon Police Department building and, indeed, most buildings in Raccoon city. She turned to Billy and said,

"What exactly are the odds of us being on a train filled with Umbrella employees and then, having escaped the train, finding ourselves in another largely unrelated Umbrella complex. Umbrella ordered the train to be destroyed as soon as possible. How likely is that the very next available turn off leading to a dead end would lead directly into the heart of Umbrella. The point of the train crash was to destroy the evidence of Umbrella's involvement, but won't somebody notice that a flippin' train's gone missing, and it won't be hard to find out where it's gone and that will lead the authorities straight to the Umbrella corporation and provide them with far more concrete evidence than the train alone which provides no evidence as the presence of Umbrella and the virus could easily be coincidental, and then…"

"That's enough Rebecca, we all know that this is highly unlikely"

Little did our heroes realise that they were already being watched…


	11. A conflict of Evil interests

In a ominously darkened room of obvious Evil, two men were staring intently at a computer screen. For obvious reasons, the Architect had set up a security camera pointing at the hatch to the sewer, probably so that everyone could admire the genius of his work. The two men looked at each other as the hatch moved and a woman climbed up. They would have gasped, but Evil doesn't show such emotion. Evil always thought of emotion as a fair indicator of weakness, not least as Evil should never be surprised as, whatever happens, Evil was fully aware of what was about to happen in any situation. If Evil didn't plan something itself, then someone would have at least have timidly run the idea past Evil at some point. Therefore, by this logic, had the two men been asked, they had been fully aware of our heroes' imminent arrival. Wesker and Birkin, for these were the men sitting in the clichéd Evil dark room, gazed at each other longingly for a moment before getting back to the matter in hand. Birkin said,

"Wow, it sure is lucky that we, the only surviving people in the entire complex, were both in the same room at the same time, looking at the exact screen that showed the only movement in the facility at the exact moment it happened. What are the odds, eh? Lucky that we had fully planned for this eventuality… um, who are they, Wesker?"

"The girl is Rebecca Chambers. She's a member of Bravo Team. She joined as a police officer under a year ago before we trained her as a medic. I've been fully expecting her to arrive. Right now. And now she has fallen into the trap we have set for her. All we have to do is activate the anti-Rebecca measures that we have ready for this well-planned-for event. Um, Birkin, what should we do?"

"Activate the self destruct mechanism! Activate the self destruct mechanism!"

"Not yet, we'll do that later"

The men were surprised to see a man follow Rebecca who, even more embarrassingly for Evil, they didn't recognise. They looked at each other with mutual confusion on their faces,

"Ok, Wesky, who's that?"

"Don't call me that. Anyway, that's Rebecca's… new friend…? Anyway, he's clearly Chris Redfield"

"No he's not"

"Not literally, I mean that he's the clichéd male protagonist, like Chris. Anyway, we can tell enough about him just from looking, it's not like the laws of the Resident Evil universe allow a character who can't be figured out by his looks. It seems pretty clear that he'll be the one who pushes boxes around while she mixes the chemicals together."

"Hey Wesky"

"What?"

"It's pretty dark in here"

"So?"

"Well, given that's true, don't you feel you're dressed inappropriately…"

"Don't even say it"

"Hey Wesky, why are you wearing your sunglasses… at night?"

"Shut up! Shut up!"

"Do the song! Do the song!"

"I am not doing the bloody song, it wasn't even funny the first time!"

This fairly common argument was suddenly interrupted by an event that Evil had, obviously, long ago anticipated. A voice sounded throughout the building over an old announcement system. The voice cackled as only Evil ever bothered to and began,

"Please be silent while I go over Umbrella's 3 founding principles"

Wesker and Birkin both began clapping and yelling as loudly as possibly, as Evil is instinctively as contrary as one can physically be. 

On the far side of Raccoon city, in a comfortable flat of indeterminable Evil hidden in a gnarled tree, Marcus was having some fun. This had seemed like such a good idea at the time. To make an announcement over the old system wasn't very hard to arrange, but Marcus, in his excitement, had not planned exactly what he was going to say. Marcus sat in a leather armchair by the phone, he didn't have a hands free phone, though he was planning to get one at some point, and stared at some leeches by the toaster, who were waiting for a Pop Tart to heat up. He thought for a minute, what principles should Umbrella be built on? He needed something dramatic, or he could forget about it now. He started with,

"Discipline"

Yes, discipline was good. Discipline implied subservience to him. Discipline implied punishment. Discipline implied whipping and death. Marcus waved his arms camply; he was quite happy at what he just thought up. He quickly calmed down as he realised he needed 2 more fundamental principles on which Umbrella was built. He started waving madly at the leeches by the toaster. They turned to him, slightly bemused until they saw he was on the phone. Marcus gestured madly towards the bookshelf in the corner of the room. The leeches slithered over to the shelf. They knew the drill – Marcus would often be giving an Evil speech over the phone but would come to a halt when he realised he wasn't sure one of the long words he wanted to use actually meant what he thought it did, at which point the leeches had to get the dictionary. Marcus had set up this measure since the time when he had ordered a town to surrender, or else every man, woman and child would be exacerbated. While they were sliding the dictionary out as best as they could without opposable digits, Marcus filled the pause with some increasingly strained Evil laughter. As they brought over the dictionary, Marcus began shaking his head madly and mouthing 'thesaurus' at them over and over. The leeches sighed and returned to the shelf, picking out the thesaurus, which they ferried over to him quite slowly to get back at Marcus making them carry 2 heavy books without a word of thanks and forcing them to let their Pop Tart go cold. To say that Marcus 'controlled' the leeches was not quite correct. They existed in a symbiotic relationship, where, without them, Marcus had no body and, without him, the leeches had no sandpit. The leeches would generally do what Marcus said, within reason, but he had no way to force them to do anything they didn't want to. That wasn't the worst situation however, as it was far more problematic when the leeches couldn't come to general consensus and decided to hold a referendum in which every leech demanded to vote one by one in a sealed booth on the controversial proposition, which was unfortunate, as it often left Marcus missing a nose or finger and feeling quite awkward for the rest of the day. Perhaps the most humiliating situations were where the leeches fell out with each other during an act of Evil. Marcus had feared this happening since the day when his attempt to destroy a nuclear power plant had to be called off when his threat of detonating a bomb right inside the main reactor had been rendered rather impotent by his arms going on strike because they had not been fed.

Marcus, meanwhile, was madly thumbing through the thesaurus. He was very happy with 'discipline' and wanted to come up with two synonymous terms to reinforce the point. He smiled as he read out,

"Devotee. Student."

Back in the Umbrella facility on the other side of Raccoon City, Billy, Rebecca, Birkin and Wesker all stared at the speakers nearest to them. Billy turned to Rebecca,

"Umbrella was built on the principles of Discipline, Devotee and Student?"

Suddenly, a shuffling sound came over the speakers…

Back in Marcus' flat, a quick-witted leech that had made up Marcus' shoulder had pointed out that Marcus had just read out the first 2 entries of 'disciple'. Marcus banged his head against the phone receiver before turning back to the thesaurus. He laughed evilly, though his heart wasn't really in it anymore and said into the phone,

"Discipline. Obedience. Unity."

The quick fix fooled nobody. Marcus moved on to the second phase of his plan. He put down the phone and moved over to his computer. Though Marcus admired the ethics of Microsoft, he nonetheless couldn't stand the constant technical problems and had traded in his old computer for a Mac last year. Several leeches were working the computer, one on the mouse and another two on the keyboard, readying the imminent ambitious attempt at high-tech Evil. Marcus sat down, having turned off the light to ensure that nobody would see the tiffany lamp behind him, smoothed his hair, prodded himself in the eye with a pencil to ensure that he had sufficiently bulging Evil eyes and turned on the web cam.

Elsewhere, Wesker and Marcus, unwilling to admit that they had no idea what the hell was going on anymore, were superficially unfazed by the sudden appearance of a long haired bug-eyed 'man' on every screen in the security room they were occupying . The giant swarm of heads simultaneously shouted,

"You fools! It is I, James Marcus! And I contaminated…"

"Marcus!" interrupted Wesker, "What are you doing here? You're dead"

"No, no, I'm not, let me finish, I contaminated the train and this facility"

"No, you are dead" said Birkin, "I saw you die"

"No, you just shot me with semi automatic weaponry. Your first main mistake was to decide to assassinate me while I was working with a sample from one of my leeches, thus shattering the microscope slide and filling me with holes, thus absolutely ensuring that the Progenitor Virus and leech DNA would be well mixed with my blood stream. Your second mistake was to make no attempt to ensure that I was dead or dispose of my body properly. The third mistake was that you actually just threw my corpse into a river which every drain in the facility leads to, thus ensuring that every experiment Umbrella was carrying on would be tried out on my corpse, and it is interesting that you didn't notice the problem here given that every single Umbrella experiment is designed to try and raise the dead, making a sewage outlet a really bad place to dispose of a corpse of someone you wanted to die and stay dead"

"Right," pondered Wesker, "Umbrella's troops are pretty useless, given the fate of Delta Team on the train and the future uselessness of the Umbrella troops in the Paris Facility combined with the one assassination we've asked them to do turning a slightly insane but basically harmless scientist into a bug eyed… significantly younger man. Well, you're not that pretty really, but a virus that can take 30 years off anyone's age could be pretty valuable in the open market, thanks Marcus"

"Um, not quite" said Marcus, pulling off his nose, which reverted back into leech form and waved at Wesker over the internet link as best as leeches can. Wesker recoiled in slight disgust and answered,

"Ok, fine, I can see that the whole leech thing is less desirable. So, our assassination turned a mortal scientist into an unstoppable killing machine… hang on, you're a shape shifter now? So, of all the forms you could have taken, you chose the bulgy eyed freak look?"

"Yes, because I'm Evil"

"Ha"

"How dare you laugh? I am so Evil"

"You? Ha, you're just an amateur compared to us"

"Ha! You two are both still human, how Evil can you possibly be"

"I know the human thing is unfortunate, but we're both working on that"

"Yes, well, I destroyed the train with the T-virus and I've contaminated this facility, so beat that"

"You didn't contaminate the facility, we did, by irresponsibly and pointlessly messing with the T-virus since the late 1970s, and we've managed to infect the whole of Raccoon Forest from the Spencer Mansion and we'll imminently infect all of Raccoon City"

"You so didn't. I contaminated that lab"

"Prove it. There are at least 4 T-virus outbreaks every day in Raccoon City, how do you know that this one was your doing?"

"Yes, well, I'm coming down and I'm going to get revenge on you for killing me using my army of super leeches that I now control" Marcus' neck began hissing, "Ok, fine, super leeches that I co-operate with"

"Yes, well, we're so Evil that we've been expecting you for… 6 months!"

"Yes, well, I'm so Evil that I've been planning my revenge for 8 months!"

"I so Evil that I'm planning to betray Umbrella because I'm Evil enough to betray lesser Evil for my own gain!"

"Yes, well, I have a little plan that I'm Evil enough to not tell you as it's much more foreboding to just hint at it" 

Marcus turned off the web cam and smiled, that had gone quite well. He was unsure what to do now exactly. He could go down to the facility itself, but there probably wouldn't be particularly nice accommodation there for guests, given that it was a rundown facility that was completely contaminated by a virus that thrived on death. Marcus at length decided he had to go to the facility, a decision that was largely made as Marcus had to go out anyway since he had several letters he needed to post soon and he had to nip to the supermarket at some point to get some more bread and toilet paper, both of which were dangerously low. Anyway, the trip might help in his other mission. Marcus, smiling, grabbed a red file from a desk in the corner and went into his bedroom to pack his suitcase for the trip, a necessity that few people ever consider Evil would need to do, but certainly an essential point given that Marcus was packing for what could be a few days away for himself and innumerable leeches, all of whom required a healthy diet and toys to keep them entertained when they weren't bringing death and carnage upon puny mortals. A few hours later, Marcus sealed up his bulging suitcase, left the flat with an accompanying herd of leeches (Marcus was certain that herd wasn't the correct term, but given that leeches were not traditionally particularly social creatures, he guessed it was up to him to come up with a term), locked the door behind him carefully, left the key under the doormat, which had 'cower puny mortal' written on it in pink letters, and walked off into the dark night wearing several dresses for warmth and a rain tunic just in case…


	12. Train of Evil

The narrator sat down at his computer and began to type the next chapter. The audience must excuse the fact that the narrator has so suddenly decided that he is worthy of a place on the fic, but the characters were not doing anything interesting. Birkin and Wesky were sitting in the same room as before waiting for their next cut-scene. Rebecca and Billy were strolling around the mansion filling largely identical zombies with bullets and trying to find several pieces of microfilm or a black statue's wing and generally not doing anything amusing. Marcus was waiting for the next bus to get to the far side of Raccoon City. The narrator therefore decided to use his crystal ball of foresight and omniscience (which sounded impressive to the narrator when he was in the shop but actually has fairly limited uses) to see look at what had happened before the train incident, at least until those damn protagonists danced like the puppets they were. The problem was that the narrator had no real control over the protagonists, he was omnipresent and omniscient but fell short of omnipotence. 

Marcus would have Evil believe that he had attacked the train in a malicious attack to get revenge on the Umbrella corporation's so-not-Evil employees onboard. The truth was somewhat less Evil. Marcus' main job was a self-employed Evil genius and final boss. However, Evil doesn't pay the bills. This never worried most Evil as the Tyrants of this world preferred the darkness – it was scary. Marcus however knew that he could hardly read without electricity for lights at night and cooking would be tricky as well. Most Evil would just eat the raw flesh off their fallen foes, but Marcus preferred not to. Marcus felt that raw flesh, like oysters and black pudding, had a particular acquired taste that he simply didn't like, though he often ate raw flesh at formal Evil dinners as it carried an air of Evil sophistication. Marcus was however quite a fan of Chinese food, and thus required an occupation to keep the nice food coming in (not to even go into the problems of feeding leeches, some of whom had nut allergies). Marcus in fact often did medical lectures using knowledge from his former life as the scientist Dr James Marcus. 

This is how he begun the previous day's evening. He had received an invitation to give a lecture in Raccoon University on Resiphysics in today's world. Marcus couldn't drive. If Evil asked about driving, then Marcus had never tried to, as the pathetic machine of the idiotic mortals was foolishly inefficient. If Evil asked when Evil had seen Marcus during a driving lesson recently, Marcus was either learning solely in order to mow down the humans as they crawled on their bellies and begged for mercy on the pavements or he had consumed the warm flesh of his driving instructor shortly afterwards. In actual fact, Marcus was trying to learn to drive, but had already failed his test twice. The problem was that there was a certain conflict of interests in driving. Marcus had problems balancing the desire to keep to the rules of the road with the desire to take advantage of the perfect Evil opportunity to ram other humans off the road. The latter desire had won in the past 2 tests. Marcus had tried to apply for an Evil driving license, but had been turned down several times. However, Marcus could hardly afford to run a car when he lived so far from Raccoon City and taxis would never come to his flat. Therefore, for all these reasons and more, Marcus had no choice but to walk to the nearby train station and commute into Raccoon City if he wanted to get to his lecture. 

Marcus had arrived at the station as the sun began to set. He, as he believed, had to catch the Ecliptic Express into Raccoon City. Marcus was not leaving much time to spare and could easily have been late for his lecture. He was in a foul mood anyway as earlier that day he had read in the Telegraph that taxes would be rising shortly on leech related accessories. Marcus was a long term reader of the Telegraph, preferring it massively to the sensationalist Daily Mail, though he would often read the Times either in the shop, or by asking the paper boy nicely for a copy, which the boy rarely refused to do for some reason. 

Marcus truly detested train stations and other such public places. The main reason was that they were so crowded. Marcus was something of a hygiene freak and crowded places made him very uncomfortable. The station was hot and everyone was sweating, and Marcus was as keen to avoid flu as anybody else. The fact that the audience must keep in mind is that Marcus was, by this point, about 105, and he had the immune system to match, however his present appearance made getting the flu shot that he was entitled to rather difficult. Marcus himself was also sweating. Well, technically Marcus didn't sweat, he produced a form of slime that created a moist microenvironment to prevent his leeches from drying out, but the effect was equally uncomfortable for Marcus. Marcus was aware from various day time TV chat shows that some people got very stressed in public places when with their children, who would incessantly beg for chocolate or something similar. They had it easy compared to Marcus' present situation. Marcus had approximately 800 children of sorts, who actually made up his limbs and often, quite incredibly, all wanted to do something different from the rest. Marcus feared crowded places as the leeches would often take matters into their own hands. It was not uncommon to notice that his left arm was missing and that a large number of leeches were swarming over a pile of entrails or a red smear. Marcus hated shouting at his leeches, but he felt that he had to make his point if they were, contrary to his wishes, snacking between meals, firstly as Marcus always felt horribly awkward apologising to the victims family and asking if there was anything he could do to make up for it and also because his leeches, while obviously incredibly aggressive, were also incredibly emotional, an unfortunate side effect of the T-virus, and calming at least 400 crying leeches was a time consuming task.

Marcus walked to the automatic ticket machine. He refused to go to the normal booth, despite the fact it was probably quicker. The problem was that Marcus felt that he ought to threaten the member of staff with eternal pain and torment, but this resulted in him not being served. Marcus also, like most people, disliked queues. He bought a family ticket for the Ecliptic Express (a leech collective ticket did not exist and the ticket inspector, who knew Marcus well, wasn't happy for him to convey nearly 1000 organism with one adult ticket. As the machine whirred and clicked, Marcus leaned forwards and muttered,

"Hurry up with your machinations, or I shall consume your very soul!" Marcus did this as quietly as possible as, while he felt he ought to threaten at least someone with certain death today, he didn't like people looking at him like he was crazy, which happened when he threatened inanimate objects, especially with desouling, as Evil generally accepted that firstly machines didn't have souls and secondly, despite constant Evil research, removing and consuming souls was a tricky business.

As Marcus walked down to the platform, increasing hissing alerted him to the fact that his leeches wanted a drink. Marcus was well aware that he could either buy a soft drink or his leeches would feast on the blood of a passing civilian, which was most embarrassing. Entering the shop, Marcus tried to figure out what to buy. From what he could sense, the leeches were, as usual, divided in their opinion, although the largest faction seemed to want Lemon Fanta. Marcus was shocked to see that the Fanta was £1.30, though he did have a grudging respect for the man who came up with that price, as it was a true example of commercial Evil at work, which was heart-warming, or it would have been if Marcus had still possessed such an organ.

Marcus looked up at the electronic board with the train times on it. The sign clearly said that the 5:18 to Raccoon City was 'on time'. The clock next to the sign clearly said that it was 5:20. There was no train and no sign of a train. Marcus hated technology for this reason. It was pretty damn obvious that the train was not on time, so why couldn't the sign update itself. Of course, Marcus wasn't thinking this at all. Marcus was thinking about when he was going to slaughter each and every person on the train. Obviously. 

The train did arrive after some time, and people crowded around the doors. Marcus walked behind them and was mildly annoyed that they didn't recoil in terror and fall onto their knees to beg for mercy, thus allowing him to get a good seat by a window that, preferably, faced forwards (quite of the few of the leeches seemed to suffer from travel sickness if he sat facing backwards for some reason). The train was ludicrously packed with people swarming around and looking for seats. Marcus saw a woman with an empty seat next to her. Marcus walked over in what he hoped was a threatening manner and laughed Evilly, before bellowing,

"Would you mind if I sat next to you please?"

"I'm sorry," said the woman as she looked up, "but…"

"Silence!" bellowed Marcus "Sorry, force of habit, what were you saying?"

"My husband will be back in a minute"

"Foolish mortal! You will pay for this insolence! You haven't seen any other seats anywhere, have you?"

The woman shook her head and Marcus walked further down the seething train, looking for an empty seat. Marcus' options were somewhat limited. Marcus couldn't afford to upgrade to first class and detested cigarette smoke, so the smoking carriage was not an option. Marcus could see a seat in front of him, which he leapt into quickly without bothering to ask the occupant of the adjacent seat. Marcus smiled contentedly to himself as he relaxed, before he looked towards his neighbour. It was a middle aged man who was quietly singing along to what Marcus recognised, to his shame, was the Sugababes, which he actually quite enjoyed, although if Evil asked then he listened to death metal and nothing more. Marcus sighed, as this was going to be along trip,

"Great," he thought, "I'm sitting next to a non-Evil freak, why me?"

The narrator will refrain from revealing the thoughts of the middle aged man, who had just glanced at his new neighbour.

As the train sped through Raccoon Forest, Marcus relaxed slightly, as he would just get to his lecture, even if he would be a little late. Then the train began to slow down and then stopped. Marcus looked around but saw only equally confused faces. Then a voice came over the announcement system,

"We regret to inform you that the Ecliptic Express has been delayed due to a number of giant spiders on the track. As soon as they move, we'll get moving again"

Marcus gasped. Giant spiders meant Umbrella. Umbrella meant Wesker and Birkin. Those were the two men that had murdered him. And now their experiment was delaying his train. Now it was personal. Marcus would have to destroy Umbrella, despite the fact that they themselves were fairly Evil, considering all things. But there wasn't much he could do now, stuck out in the forest. Marcus decided to fall back on what he knew; Evil. He muttered into his chest a hastily conceived plan involving wiping out the train for an Evil laugh. The leech that was his ear hissed and replied,

"Do you have any idea how big this train is? Anyway, most of us have already eaten tonight"

Marcus glanced sideways and noticed that the seat next to him was now empty. He sighed at this and then turned back to his chest,

"Look, there's nothing else to do, so can't we please just act as a family for once and agree to kill everything that moves without arguing?"

The leeches moodily nodded, but continued to moan and do nothing. Then Marcus started singing. The singing was something that Evil had greatly misunderstood over the years. Evil had always just assumed that Marcus sung to control the leeches in, if not scary then at least a psychologically disturbing way. In fact, Marcus had always sung. One of the main reasons Spencer had ordered him to be assassinated was that he had, in every Christmas Umbrella party he had ever attended, stood up on a table in a drunken stupor and performed the greatest hits of high-voiced males throughout history. One of the greatest joys Marcus had experienced since his resurrection was the Beegees. The fact was that singing was the only way Marcus controlled the leeches, but not how Evil thought he did. Marcus would start singing and not stop until the leeches had done what he told them to. It was cruel but necessary sometimes, though he did feel guilty afterwards. As Marcus informed the leeches what they could tell by the way he used his walk, they made a synchronised groan and immediately leapt from Marcus' form to the passengers around him, tearing them apart. Marcus laughed Evilly as he backed away from the slaughter, trying to avoid getting blood on his freshly washed tunic. 

Thus the train was destroyed.

And as the narrator finished padding out a largely pointless chapter, Rebecca and Billy conveniently started doing something interesting…


	13. The key of fire

Billy and Rebecca strolled through the mansion at a similar speed, though the difference was that Billy was tiredly trailing behind Rebecca who was pulling him along at a swift pace. Rebecca had been like this ever since she had got to the dining room and seen a door covered with a flame pattern. She had been sprinting around the mansion, desperately looking for a way to get past the door into the room behind it. Billy pulled his arm out of Rebecca's iron grip and whined at her,

"Look, just where are you going?"

"We've got to find the key to get past that door!"

"Why?"

"Because it's locked!"

"Don't you think that perhaps…" Billy gave up. Clearly Resiphysics were again contrary to common sense. Billy was well aware that some doors had been closed for an excellent reason and thus ought to stay closed. Rebecca's usual answer to this was that even a door closed for a good reason must have at least one shiny thing behind it. In retrospect, the narrator noticed, it was fairly inevitable that Raccoon City would end up as a smoking hole in the ground sooner or later, even without the nuclear strike. Billy, already being conveyed rapidly towards… well, round in circles through unlocked rooms anyway. He noticed something shining against the wall. He pointed it out and walked over to it,

"Brilliant! A map! Now we can explore easily!"

"Stop!" yelled Rebecca as Billy reached for the map, "You can't take that!"

"Why not?"

"Because you're already holding 6 items!"

"No…" said Billy, glancing from side-to-side, "I, as a long term devotee of Resiphysics, can carry 8 items, just like Jill can…"

"Oh no, I'm not falling for that again, you haven't even been Resibaptised yet, so you're lucky I'm letting you carry all 6 items!"

"Rebecca, please, I'm carrying 2 first aid sprays, and they're really small, and my pistol's in a holster, so that doesn't take up any space at all, and another item is handgun ammunition, and I've only got 30 bullets. My pockets are empty and my hands are empty. Can't I just take it please?"

"No. It's an item"

"But this is really impractical. What if we can't carry enough ammunition to survive because of these stupid laws of physics? I've only got 30 bullets left!"

"Then pick up some more"

"But… they're another item, aren't they?"

"No, you're already carrying handgun bullets, so you can pick up more"

"So, I've got room in my pockets to pick up another 225 bullets, but I can't carry an easily foldable map?"

"That's right"

"Well, how about I go and get some more first aid sprays, since I'm already carrying one, because I can therefore carry more…"

"No, they're different, a single spray takes up a whole item slot"

"… What if…" Billy thought quickly, before saying slowly, "This map isn't an item. It's a document to go into 'the file' of eternal storage space"

Comparing that Rebecca had problems carrying enough supplies to survive, Billy found it odd that she decided to carry every document she had found with her in an increasingly bulging file, especially as, slightly worryingly, the file included the never discarded information sheet, instructing Rebecca in how to use weapons, look at things, move and open doors.

Rebecca grudgingly nodded, as if she wanted to make survival as unlikely as possible, and took the map into her file, which Billy wasn't even willing to bother suggesting she should empty out to make room for more useful things than a memo pointing out the weak spot on the giant lobster that Billy had long since removed from existence. Billy took the map and looked at where the door with the flame pattern was. He turned triumphantly to Rebecca and began,

"You see, it's just a single room behind that door. We shouldn't even bother looking behind it. We've got more important things to deal with"

"It's a single room! It's a single room!" squealed Rebecca, "Well that means it's got to have something brilliant behind it! The single rooms always have something hugely important to help with progression in them!"

"Yes, that or it's a storage cupboard which Umbrella locked to stop young children getting at bleach"

"Yeah, right," chuckled Rebecca, "I bet it's a giant… koala bear! And it'll be guarding a new key! Then we can get to new giant animals!"

Billy was tempted to point out that keys were unnecessary as doors could really not stand up to that most universal of keys, a pump action shotgun. Billy contemplating mentioning that a room containing a giant animal was one that they really didn't want to go into. Billy could have stated that it was highly unlikely that Umbrella would have left a key or item quite necessary to get through their rather complex building in the same room as a giant animal that wished to feast on blood. Billy finally gave some thought to questioning just how a koala bear would ever be scary, as a large one would presumably still spend 20 hours a day sleeping, move slowly while awake and only eat particularly sweet plant matter. Billy resignedly realised that it really wasn't worth it.

As Rebecca ran ahead into a large hall that was just too ominously large and empty for Billy's liking, Billy himself leaned against a wall and got out his lighter, which Rebecca had allowed him to keep as a 'personal' item. It was empty. He reached for a cigarette, before remembering that he had thrown them into the bin them since Rebecca had insisted that each one should take up a whole inventory screen slot. He banged his head against the wall, worrying that this mansion was having a bad effect on how realistically he was acting. 

Rebecca suddenly started squealing from the top of the stairs. Billy slowly walked after her. She ran up to him and shouted,

"I've found the key!"

"Oh… good… where is it?"

"Over there, under that heavy cage"

"Under a cage?"

"Yes, it's under a heavy cage which seems to be removed only by the use of equipment on the far side of the room"

"So, the key to a single room is hidden under a large cage that requires heavy equipment to move? Firstly, don't you think that a key that someone went to all this trouble to keep hidden to make sure that nobody ever entered the single room it guards in a building full of people who have died horribly is probably best left alone? Secondly, why exactly would anyone go to all this trouble to hide a key? Isn't it all slightly suspicious?"

Billy was right, it was all slightly suspicious, but that's because it made no sense whatsoever. The present location of the key could be explained by the events of a few weeks ago. Umbrella employees were strolling casually around the complex, desperately trying to find the bloody toilet or going about their quite Evil business. In a security room deep in the complex, two men were sitting watching over the Umbrella corporation's work. Wesker gently passed the fire key from hand to hand. He had come up with the idea for the keys. It had been an instant entry point into Evil. He had come up with the keys of sword and shield and so on in the Spencer Mansion. Now he had come up with the fire and water keys. They were brilliant. Suddenly, a siren sounded, signifying that there was a T-virus leak in the facility. Wesker and Birkin were both well drilled in this. They both leapt up from their seats. Wesker and Birkin turned to each other and Wesker said in a flat monotone,

"Right, you take the water key, I'll take the fire key"

"Wesky… why?"

"We've got to hide the keys to stop people from getting through the facility!"

"Right, I'll go and lock all the doors! Hang on, won't that make it rather difficult for our employees to escape? Won't it be therefore be much trickier for any Umbrella team to clean up the facility later if they have to work through this mess?"

"But it'll stop the virus spreading… yes, that's a vaguely realistic reason"

"No it's not, you really won't stop the spread of a microscopic organism by locking a wooden door with gaps around the edges"

"Look, can we just get on with this please? The facility will be completely contaminated shortly. You go down into the subbasement beneath the facility as deep underground as you can go and put the water key into a complex maze with two hunters, then lock the doors and spray a few cockroaches and spiders with an extra strong version of the virus. I'll head to the big hall and hide the fire key inside one of the feeding pits under a heavy cage to make sure nobody will get it. After that, I'll head to the conference room and set all the knight statues to block the doors and then take the hands off that clock on the top floor. You go around the building and lock every door you can from the other side of wherever it would be useful to have it open and then take all the security disks that it would rather safer for us to personally hold and then hide them in locked rooms"

"Right, should I hide the keys and lock the doors in such a way that it's impossible to get anywhere in the facility without an item that we'll keep with us?"

"No, leave a succession of available items that will ensure that a not-that-clever person can get through the whole mansion pretty quickly"

"So what do we do to stop STARS showing up and ruining everything?"

"Don't worry, I've got a great plan ready for that. All we need are a series of puzzles that cannot be solved by only one person. I've personally trained STARS to split up at the first available opportunity. They'll all head out alone and fail!"

"Remind me, where does the water door lead to? The secret laboratories proving Umbrella's involvement? The… water labs with another giant shark?"

"Umm, actually it leads to the bar and the technology room where a few people play around with making furniture in their lunchtime"

"Right, well worth keeping locked then"

"Absolutely, let's get going"

"I'll see you later Wesky"

Back in the facility some time later, Rebecca was trying to figure out how to get hold of the well hidden fire key. She could see that the cage was lifted by a mechanism on the far side of the room which she could not move as it was very heavy. Rebecca said,

"Ok Billy, I think it's fairly clear. As this is too heavy, I need to find some sort of pulley mechanism to allow me to move the cage. Let's go and find it!"

"Perhaps that's unnecessary as you can't move it, so someone else has to…"

"Right, if only there was some sort of second protagonist somewhere. Some sort of muscle-bound ex-Army type would be really useful…" 

Billy cleared his throat. Rebecca turned back towards him from her contemplative stare into the ceiling, 

"Ok, you'll do. Now, you lift the cage up with the mechanism"

Billy did so and held the cage up. Rebecca turned to him,

"Ok, now go and get the key"

"I'm holding the mechanism. If I let this handle go then the cage will drop"

"Ok, I'll go and find a device that can hold the mechanism wound so that you can go and retrieve the key over there"

"Or, how about I hold the mechanism and you go and get the key"

"What? That doesn't make sense"

"Define sense"

"STARS taught me about these situations. Every puzzle has a solution that can be achieved by one person alone. If a puzzle can't be solved by one person alone then you haven't collected all the necessary equipment yet"

"But it would much easier, given that I'm here, to take advantage of me and go and get the key using my help"

"Hang on, I know how I can stop this being heresy"

Rebecca uneasily took out an ink ribbon and put it down, an action she still wasn't completely comfortable with, and thus held only 5 items. She turned to Billy,

"Billy Coen, you are now my sixth item, and I am inserting you into the necessary mechanism in order to access shiny things, thus fulfilling my obligation to the church of Resiphysics"

"I'm not sure I feel comfortable with this situation, or that exact wording, but if it gets us that key, if that's a good thing, then I guess I can put up with this"

Rebecca happily skipped over to the elevated cage and reached for the key. Billy realised that he was in an excellent situation. All he needed to do was let go of the handle now and Rebecca would be trapped. No more Resiphysics. No more 6 item limits. No more key hunting. Nonetheless, something prevented Billy from leaving Rebecca trapped under a rusty cage in an empty stone room in a complex infested with the undead. He had a certain fondness for her. His thought train, presently working towards a new conclusion, was suddenly interrupted by a suspicious growling and scuttling sound…


	14. Ever Decreasing Circles of Centipedes

Billy, suddenly finding himself unable to move, not least as he was trapped inside in cut-scene, looked on as Rebecca was approached from behind by a giant centipede… thing. Billy yelled out to Rebecca,

"Rebecca, picking up the key activates a cut-scene that releases a boss! Put the key back!"

Rebecca unthinkingly dropped the key, and the giant centipede, frowning at being disturbed for no reason, retreated back into his hole. A bemused look appeared on her face. She reached down to the key again, and picked it up. The centipede emerged with a scuttle and the closest thing to a roar that centipedes can make and moved towards Rebecca menacingly. Rebecca dropped the key again. The centipede disappeared. Billy was dismayed to see Rebecca repeat the trick with a childlike lack of fear of death,

"Boss goes on, boss goes off, boss goes on, boss goes off…"

"Rebecca! Stop it! Let's just get out of here"

"No, we've got to fight the centipede"

"Why?"

"Because it's here. You always have to fight the bosses. They're always completely in the way or guarding something valuable"

Billy thought about it. It was true that bosses didn't normally appear in small side rooms guarding 15 bullets for a handgun,

"Are you sure that that's even a boss?" said Billy

"It's got a cut-scene, and is guarding an important item"

"Yes, but… a centipede… it's just not scary"

A small whimper came from the grate that the centipede had crawled down

"I know, there are far too many giant insects in this building, this thing, the cockroaches, that scorpion, leeches, it's all quite dull. Y'know, we've got a giant crocodile in the basement of the police building. Admittedly, we've got a giant moth as well, so I guess they cancel out"

"Ok, fine, just get the key, fight the creature. It's a bloody centipede. How hard can it be to kill?"

Rebecca picked up the key and prepared to look as shocked as possible before doing her damsel in distress routine.

Nothing.

Rebecca cleared her throat.

Nothing.

She went over to the grate and yelled,

"Oh, good. I have just taken this key. KEY. I am glad that there is nothing to stop me taking it… Oh hurry up"

"Rebecca!" hissed Billy, "Don't tell the boss that you've just taken his key. Just leave now"

"But that isn't right. You can't take a key and not fight a boss. It's not fair. It's practically stealing. Hurry up!" she yelled down the grate

"Oh fine, but he better turn up soon, or I'm just going"

"He's not coming out"

"Why not?"

"He says that he's sulking"

"Why?"

"Because you said he wasn't scary and would be easy to kill. Well done Billy, you've upset a boss"

Billy didn't bother replying. Resiphysics made it clear that shooting bosses with automatic weaponry until dead was the accepted etiquette, but hurting their feelings was apparently off-limits. Billy sighed to himself. Rebecca wouldn't leave without fighting a boss. She was that stubborn. He suddenly had an idea,

"Rebecca! Just throw something down there!"

"That's mean!"

"And killing him isn't?"

"There's a time and a place for senseless murder, and this isn't it"

"Fine, could you just apologise to him for me"

There was a brief pause,

"He wants to know if you really think he isn't scary, because the other centipedes always used to call him names"

Billy's head sank into his hands. Who could have guessed that giant insects were inclined towards crises of confidence?

"Yes, I think that he's very scary. He's big and tough and nasty. In fact I think he'd win in a fight between him and Nemesis"

Another moment passed as Rebecca relayed this information to the centipede. A second later the giant insect scuttled out and, seizing Rebecca in its legs, scuttled around the room aimlessly, not attacking Billy. Billy, not bothering with weapons, said,

"Please tell me that this isn't an impotent boss who takes hostages. Please let him try and attack, at least"

"Billy! Help!"

"Look, this is just sad. This boss poses no threat"

"From your perspective, maybe, but I'm getting hurt"

"How?"

"My heart rate's changing colour!"

"What?"

"It was green a second ago! Now it's yellow!"

"What the hell are you talking about!"

"Look, this little heart rate health meter thing says that my heart rate's changing colour!"

"Sorry, you decided that you couldn't carry any weaponry due to space constraints when both your hands were still empty, but all this time you've been carrying around a heart rate monitor that measures beats per minute in an overly simplified colour code! And you're a bloody field medic!"

"It's going orange!"

"You're being squeezed by a centipede! Why the hell would your heart rate… change colour? Surely your arms would hurt or something? Why your heart?"

"Because that's what happens"

"And let me guess, a pot plant would sort out an irregular heartbeat?"

"Yes, because the perfect heart rate is green, and green herbs are green, so the two are obviously connected"

"I just won't ask what you think about the medicinal value of differing favours of Fruit Pastilles"

"Look, I'm dying here!"

"You've got a gun too!"

"I'm a damsel in distress!"

"Can't you look after yourself without my help for five minutes?"

"Red! Red now! Red and slow heart rate!"

"You're putting it on"

"What?"

"You can't bloody die from an irregular heart beat caused by over enthusiastic hugs from a centi-legged anti-boss!"

Billy was sadly proved wrong as Rebecca's health bar ran out and she fell to the floor, rather cleverly writing out 'You are dead' with her own blood, despite the fact that she had possessed no wounds a second ago. Rebecca, looking forwards to figuring out what happened after death, was confronted not with a tunnel, pearly gates or a higher being, but by an options menu. Rebecca clicked on 'continue' and looked around as she was mysteriously resurrected by the Resi-powers that be.

Billy and Rebecca were both standing in the main hall of the facility. Billy looked around. They were right in front of the typewriter. Billy turned slowly to Rebecca,

"What the hell just happened?"

"We died"

"We?"

"Yes"

"I didn't die"

"Well I did, so we both suffered 'game over'"

"We died?"

"Yes"

"Why are we here?"

"Because we went back to the last save point"

"So after approximately 3000 years of progression in the field of medicine, it has been discovered that the key to eternal life is the ability to write your own name?"

"I'm surprised we didn't figure it out sooner"

"So now what do we do?"

"Take on the giant centipede again! Take on the giant centipede again!"

"Do we have to?"

"Fine, I'll do it. You just wait here"

"How do you intend to kill it?"

"Umm, give me the shotgun"

Billy handed over his shotgun and Rebecca ran off with a skip in her step. As Billy sighed and felt happy to have some free time, Rebecca appeared in front of him again. Billy leapt back and exclaimed,

"What just happened?"

"I died again. The shotgun didn't work"

"Why exactly do the followers of Resiphysics get to live in a completely consequence free environment?"

"I don't know. Hey, give me the grenade launcher!"

Billy handed it over and watched as Rebecca skipped out of the room again, only to appear in front of him shortly afterwards. Rebecca looked annoyed as she commented,

"No, not enough ammunition… Hey, give me the shotgun again!"

Billy sat down on a dusty chair as Rebecca worked her way through her infinite lives with her happy-go-lucky attempts to slaughter a giant insect.


End file.
